lanthanum 6.21

21

November’s end. Near-nadir of the year.
Ash-pallor in the light today, lunar ‒
enveloping leafless branches. Cold &
colder. Green-sapphire earth, grown sere.

Only this thread of moonlight, spider-light ‒
evasive zig-zag, lightfoot rodent-scuttle.
Skittering, shuttling... a whisper-tunnel,
underground. Toward zero. Midnight.

One shell of shimmering almond-coracle...
the point of its stern set where two wheels
converge, invisible, secret. Where twin keels
are buried, married ‒ merged there, coeval

with the prologue of the universe. Mirror-
image of gam-bowling prow (perpendicular
to the earth, oriented to the North Star) ‒
bent rainbow, magnetized, centripetal ‒ your

listening soul, attuned to one slow Providence.
Of each & all. The earth. Just like the calm
rotation of a sunflower ‒ great circus-thronging
brow turned toward its source, its provenance ‒

this planetary history of recollection, memory,
entails recovery at last ‒ when self-effacing
servants in disguise (that humble Robin-rabbi &
his Madeleine) join in one almond, tout-monde joie...

O my soul. Such pallid daylight lingers in
palladium tree-limbs (haunted, hunted).
Anthousa, Flora, Rose... summer’s glinting
traces. Cemetery Ridge. Green fingers.

11.30.10