lanthanum 7.7

7

Blackstone’s laborious, painfully non-
Euclidean scribbles toward squaring the circle
(on anterior hypo-moose antlers) percolate
with improvisational symmetry ‒ some canon

of fifths, that wheels with all the little candles
sweating wax & blood across expectant earth.
& it is a kind of flute-call summons (a lovers’
lonely train-hoot, far-off track, or tendrils

of lilacs’ trailing scent) that beckons him
toward those blank snowfields on every map
where he must renew & be renewed ‒ like that
saw-tooth spruce shaking snow from its shoulders

straightening up & starting over (toward
Paulette Polaris ‒ redhead northern star).
O most laborious-harmonious composer ‒
scored for vermilion wind-vanes ‒ crowded,

crowing earth-choirs! Aurora sways now
over your shoulder (serpentine, spectral)
as you orient your glittering triangle
into a matrix of such local-honey sounds

as Beatrice herself might hive (humming,
habitation). For the geometer of bees
& homing pigeons sights by crosshairs
infinitely finer than your banjo-string,

Blackstone; her olive-almond glance
you mimic with your skitterish vesica
(or wandering eye) is like Jessie Ophelia,
that river-ark (a buoyant permanence).

1.27.11