Lanthanum 7.3

3
Place... makes it possible to name.
‒ Charles Olson

Dazed, numb, numbering... Blackstone pioneer
taps his fingertips (pianissimo) upon a plain
ice cube. Black, Blackstone ice. Thin man’s
narrow mirror, wintering o’er a sneaky river

(snaking south). Translucent membrane
wiped clean by snow. Divide Roger Williams’
parabola-canoe crosswise, across the gunwales
(he muses) you make enantiomorph ‒ one

figure for twoness. Thinks on the young widow
across the way ‒ there we hung up our harps
& cried. One still takes air, walks, weeps ‒
while another sleeps underfoot (so long ago).

Muted Orpheus, loco Ulysses, brought to stillness
somewhere in the wilderness. Aleppo, maybe ‒
Salem, Providence...? A milky track (blindly).
Iron magnet weighted with lead (lawrencium,

krypton) spiraled by simple gravity to a center
of centers, a stone of stones. Hexagonal
sun-kite, adrift above Rio ‒ or solitary snow-
flake (landed on the Rock). Almond of winter.

Your arc of memory, half-buried in limestone
cliff, Blackstone ‒ earthborne prong
you must make for home. So long,
pilgrim. Like a steely kind of smile, lone

rambler, reflected in the Lethe-water (Nile).
Gone not-really-gone. Just hide-n-seek
through spindly galaxies, Sully (meek
pilot; Melchizedek). Rose aisle, precessional.

1.15.11