15

 
Hobo on a promontory, talking to the trees.
Hedged in by oaks, on the cliffside - ruby
infant leaves, clinging tenaciously
to the chestnut.  A fleet of tough extremities.

 
He mumbles toward her, as toward the figure
of an absent friend - a representative,
a token of regret.  Tentative
gestures of a shaken leaf accent his verbal

 
burr. We was surrounded, honey - runnin
hard.  Somebody had to jump the wall.
We drawed straws - I tuck the damn fall.
We each made the vow - now come the doin.

 
From the ridge-spine, Providence, like a foggy lake
of shimmery concrete.  The tree-murmur
his covenant now - magnetic susurrus,
uncharted wilderness.  Words left their wake -

 
shorn calibrations, ex-commonwealth;
vectors of prescience; gabled reproof.
9-storied sorties toward that aloof
pride of lions - your bespoken tithe.

 
A trickle of honey, under the locust beans,
in the shade of the heat of the day.  Kingfisher
diving like a naval jay; the sky, cloudier
today; a sober stillness in the evergreens.

 
Hobo turns his face in the breeze of his mind.
In order to lose it there, to loosen it.
Yet the ineradicable echo of the chestnut,
anchoring, remains - the tears in the blind.