Fontegaia, winding up...

27

 
Lakewater used to lap the shore
where a lonely scholar turned her back
on the glaring blare.  Awake, awake,
the water whispered.  Try once more.

 
To penetrate to the smiling target
through a knot of jungle vines (concentric
rings of shimmery spectra - pastel Olmec
mimosa crest of feathery waves - a coronet

 
of birds of Paradise)... and begin to hear
the granite roar of a Lake Victoria, falling
from the sky.  Where all the rivers are
recoiling foam, seething, moist - cleft, sheer...

 
as if the sigh of some Red River
of the North, encircled, echoed
upon an equatorial green.  Golden
ordinance, bell-governance - Love's

 
Admiral of the Ocean Sky, looped down
and knotted to a limping sailor.  Neptune-
child - inept, familiar shadow's Chaplin-
quest - your errant, midnight son...

 
a wandering hobo-star, a Francis-mule,
a river-freebooter (plain flaw, a-flow).
Touch the keyboard, star, she whispered.  So.
Out of a hole in the rainbow donut, foolish

 
one, it flows (beyond the garish ceremonies
of the day).  O sleepy wake of Everymoon...
you are my Ocean, streaming light, a crooning
dog-star Orient; the only sweetness of the seas.