Lanthanum 8.7

7
i.m. Bernard Greenhouse

The dogwood’s white cascades, under cool gray skies
like a mantle of foam across the terraced branches
‒ a petal-waterfall, or flocks of small white doves
that drift (as if one thought) on the evening breeze.

This shapely tree gives the suggestion of a dome
or movement of a cello, or a sturdy Greenhouse
(wrapt about his Countess). Where the whispers
of the sounds are born ‒ in young leaves, at home

on high. Only the bright thread of a glissando
lathed on a painful knot ‒ low note, Ruby ‒
rubato now, legato. It is the law of to be
or not to be ‒ the covenant with sorrow, Micky...

Alessandro... Absalom (my son, my son).
The everlasting boy is rabid for the sceptre,
now ‒ the crown of righteousness, the scimitar
of justice (make it right!). Roland, his chanson

for Charlemagne. & who will wear the crown?
Jason’s chasing Ariadne through the labyrinth
forever... lust & revenge pile up the plinth
of a putrid catafalque. The doves are gone.

On an almond retina, their silent flight, into
gray twilight of a late-born spring. She is
your alloy of steel, bumpkin; your mosaic law
woven hidden in the wave... your Sheba-rescue.

Who is, was, always there. Like that tiny figure
(Rex Artus) threaded through the iconic mish-
mash of a tall window (Otranto). Yon wished-for,
once & future tolling surf (étoile Jeanne d’Arc).

5.16.11