Fonte-fonte-fonte...

23
                           for my father

 
The still O of the tire swing   we helped Dad lift
up onto the high limb   of the backyard oak
stays with me   by way of a distant photo-
memory   (calm constancy   pendentive   gift)

 
It remained with us   beneath that neighborhood
suspense   local scenes   (where the two roads met
twin Mirror Lakes)   the plays for children (Kiss me,
Kate)   the chancy dramas   panoramic masquerades

 
village parades   mounted   for seasonal visits
of the moon   Oedipus   the steady B-flat drone,   a
foliate   prairie time   (mosquitoes, mostly)   alone
with lonesome,   ripening   Roman nights

 
Ah   all that labyrinth   of lost desire   (it seemed
infinite pain   heartrending fear)   in the garden
of drawn-out Mendelssohn delights   farm women
shouting "hay!"   vast raspberry fields (Eden

 
or Hopkins)   such homespun icons   branding
a speechless amplitude   (ungraspable)   my lips
cannot contain   & thus   the curious (quercus)
quatrains stretch   my longbow toward   a fingered

 
vortex of   vanishing flint   &   just so   Black Arrow
traces   a curved margin   beyond these eyes'
horizon line   the ravens' angle   from an oak-tree
bough   only   a father's meekness   bending low

 
whose power of the zero marks   the fingerprint of
Everyman   Yahweh bull's-eye   seraphim signal-
frame   (pared wings fletched for   downward
flight)   that  tired   swing   hangs plumb

 
                              6.15.08 (Father's Day)