Fontegaia on my mind...

20

 
It has to be this morsel of sky, an acorn
in the corner (tumbled crown).  Violent
combines (narrow blades) deflect bent
furze (X furrows Y) - a stormy

 
gust across your breast, Robin.
So in the Palio, the slowest nag
will snag a cobblestone, lug that
snail's house to the Campenone,

 
let go the ring.  They'll burn her for it.
Try to understand - the winning hand's
your own.  As when a mumbling pigeon
in a frame reverberates through infinite

 
honeycomb.  Somebody's polyglot upstairs.
If bookish Homer would sail home to her
Penelope must pen like a geographer.
Sparrow Hills will number every hair.

 
I've forgotten the word I was trying to say
(blind swallow, dive...).  As if harness
shook horse, as if the inexpressible
were simple fate.  Whack! raloo, raleye, ralay...

 
Note how in frostbound forest pools, a red moon
gallops.  Mere shuffle of thunder shakes
oaks, earth - a muttered drum takes
up a thousand tents, shrouds them in word

 
balloons of fire, smoke.  They will follow him
through the mirror (sire of Pegasus, blood-
shield) - be raveled up in clouds of
silver rain.  Your copper penny pays the requiem. 

 
21

 
The hasty serpent of the warring worlds
had double-crossed himself there
in a radar room in Ecuador.
His exoskeleton reduplicated curling

 
spirit vines - dim trees at forest mouth,
vivid lincoln logs (all 212 of them).
The Martians are not coming, Clem.
Antea's little jaguar fur slipped south,

 
so smooth, so chthonic - preternatural.
A forest black and green, invariable.
Anticipate her Great Eye, man!  Sable
glamor in an almond brow - earth poetry!

 
The tumult faded like a hosted hoax.
Only a nauseating hollow vortex
where a snakeskin dangled.  Latex
apparition.  Ghastly mist of Ahab-Rex.

 
And then the sound of the mosquitoes.
A mossy blur - ten thousand feet
above Quito.  A summer sound
complete with firefly-stars (gold Moses-

 
mites) - a thrum of give me, give,
heartbitten.  And the stretched ripple-
chord (where toiling eyes rim hopefully)
goes taut.  Plowman looks up - rivers

 
emerge, merge, murmuring.
A ghostrider tracks that marge
on pegleg steed.  Unwritten charger,
prescient, humorous.  Pure purring.