8

 
The stillness of a quiet pond reflects
a round world in the round, he thought.  Captain
(not sad, now) had folded up his fogged-in
spectacles.  In an upright case.  Below decks

 
(in the red wheelhouse) compass and chart
were sealed up too.  He sank a weary temple
to the jungle floor (an awful bed, though ample).
The soul is feminine, some poet wrote,

 
he thought; a mirror is her port, and portal
too.  And as he fell into a drowsy doze
amid the studious saws of stewed cicadas...
suddenly he saw - aloft - a water-

                 
                  *

 
lily.  (Lotus.  Trim chrysanthemum.
Behind the ruffled well of Maggie Carr,
the swamping vamp of gaudy Riviera
Lil.)  Cicadas, crickets clept their random

 
hum.  And in the shadow of slow sound  
another figure crept across his sleep :
a woman like a butterfly (shrouded, adept,
all wayward, skyward... faithful to ground).

 
He dreamt, like Nebuchadnezzar.  In a delta
(ecumenical) the riddle of Rapunzel spread
(wrapped in an eggroll) on a rugged bed
of caesar salad... so his Z sighed Ah.