Lanthanum 8.10

10

I criss-crossed the country on chicory highways
to visit my ailing father in the deep midwest;
past emerald orthogonal planes of pest-
control crops (inimical now to milkweedy

monarchs), vast calm ruminant spaces that
nestle on vanishing points of immemorial
homesteads. O this Lincoln-logos world ‒
full of illness & noise, yes, but also quiet

heroic Ohio highs-&-lows (those visionary
feats, O Hart) ‒ not to mention Pennsylvania ‒
where, in the evening, some sequestered cicada
perched aloft (silo’d, yet somewhat loud) tells me

‒ keep on keepin’ on, like the song says :
because the slanting sails of cedar telephone
poles still lean toward poignant sky, horizon...
finite, infinite... their polestar (immortality).

Because there is something deeply foolish in poetry
which corresponds to something playful (fairly
prodigal) about this magnanimous & silly-lowly
sower’s universe (frisbee’d through every

black & mustard by-way) ‒ the way it was
in the beginning - in the very beginning ‒
the veritable Beguine ‒ before our sinning
singèd the surface of a planet with such woes

as tears are made of. When we were naked
dancing on goatskin, unashamed ‒ robed
in garments of light, just light. Globed with
water droplets, water ‒ shaken awake (shaqed).

7.19.11