Fontegaia in the woods...

11

 
I would be opening my
wooden paint books
of oaken smoke
for a fair, or a ferrous

 
account.  A round gray
ring (protective shield
or target) welded
to sky.  Wispy

 
the Pillow-Sailor
curls back always
to Mendelssohn, his
wet bow.  Figgy, where

 
are you?  In Washington?
My Gnashington?  Weep
not, me jipper-babe,
jailbird.  We's dumb.

 
Clatter of rusty book-ends,
raucous dead-end clamor.
How tinder that armor-
tender, Hortense

 
the Orchid!  Sheep
in the burns blent
as birds on cement
or wand of Bo-Peep

 
- yet we No-See-Um,
Commodore Popsicle!
People am fickle, fever
petal - and then some!

 
12

 
The moon went under thundercloud,
shrunk to a pipsqueak at bowsprit
of shadow-ship.  A weak
ray.  Bark of Gypsy guard-dog.

 
Good Friday cried.  You OK,
cruiser?  Trailing his guide
he relayed sad rude charade.
Fiasco, sure, seems that way.

 
Waves riffled the deckhand,
the king faced the fishes,
waterlogged hobo peep
sunk for a tense sec

 
into iron fern orchard.
His pearls, aye, they, they
were wormed in her treasure -
chested, O, Miriam, immured.

 
Foreign, forlorn was the moon then.
And as if the stiff boards of the stage-
coach creaked with everybody in a rage.
You tried to pull the rough wood open

 
of stubborn doors, of golden hours,
to peel back layers of burnt Siena
scenery, the hulled mulberry of Captain
Tom's morbid planetarium, Shakespeare's

 
chariot... there was no need.
Beneath limpid pale-green willows
of the cemetery, odd mosquitoes
bobbed and dove into folded reeds.  

 
13

 
It were a tense hour or two for Man
aft the merry mirror sang at the ford.
I meant at the door to the wood,
where Pop's vassal in a sickle-moon

 
contraption.  Kind of meta-Jack, bro.
Smokin pills.  Blurred sign for fire,
possibly.  But where was Effie?
Left her beside the hot tea silo?

 
Solo maven?  We stumped...
Figured her for a frigidaire,
a Polish nightcap (arctic her
curled back against lunar

 
sump pump)...  Meanwhile, wan moon.
We was mean, I guess.  She was
- let's not discuss it.  Cuz.
There will be a countdown very soon.

 
The horologic of drumboots
preceded to elude and bust us there
in the forest.  We stumbled, sure -
it was like walking through gauze quilts...

 
There were my Palio pals on poles
in a fairy-wheel, and there were pale
rainbows tailing us, like the smell
on a snail, like the ghost of a - us...

 
A - moose?  The sickle masqued a little
Moor, lampshaded - a Roman musket-bull.
Dilated to vet you, Sal, Sol.
He'd hatchet every volt, each vessel.

 
14

 
There was a pile of silver-gray fog
all right, in the gray matter.
Wandering with a wand of wonder
in the woods.  And did you keep a log?

 
No.  Memory of fleet shades
fled, spread sail (forgot one
frigate there).  Only tentative
reach of bare willow branchlets

 
setting off on chilly early march
prompted a plywheel of outflung
batons, feelers... a sheepish string
of pussy-buds, cat-tails.  You watch

 
from your homesick L-shaped hideaway,
unpopular, forgotten and forgetting.
Through incipient gray-green netting
bedspread with magazines.  A whisper-ray.

 
From the longest arm of the oak
hung the horseshoe swing.
Just a wooden board, dividing
infant heart from sky.  Okay?

 
Strung with serpentwine halyards, and
a kid with a golden oar of some kind
encircling.  So that the blindest
of the blind kin find (in homeward

 
stretch) the baby glimmer ring
above the carousel.  It was only fair
after hairy sparky circuits, nightmare
signs.  A kind of grippling embrace.