something more from toward the end of July :


6

The little green house at the corner (132)
of Sixth and Rooster floats a silhouette
like an allegorical cut-glass tessellation
of a burly Flemish bull's-eye (some urnic

ox marks the spot) where the force
of your green-fused stupidity flowed
through the flowers so eminently flawed
with pickled contingency the surf

of an unspoken spidery silver web
that fibrillates this yet deeper grain
of your sure-gesso'd scenes
(full-staffed and bottomfished)

where you offended one whose forebearance
yet fares forward sans your maladjusted
dike of unclad guesses at the banquet sans
your make-amendments robed in fortitude.

Lent this salt of scented losing
this light ill-starred epiphany
take from my hands this paltry gift
of dead bees of honey into sun.

A tiny clover vesica stern as the crossroad
where Saint Loser's moldy Nilbred swims
bare into the starry brine of promised land
mend your way before a last crux of sorrow

calls from your long-distant home because
this green equation of the evening light
this liminal cupola te deum tiled
with grief is proven miniscule stone aspic

molded for each heart's red huffer like
the widow's mite the coral verdigris the
piper's penny paid each humble harvester
each able baby linking alms in a cloverleaf

1.24.2000