Lanthanum 9.6

6

November. Melancholy Bruegel-sky
freckled with lost leaves (set adrift,
sent into exile). What thanks to lift
out of year’s graveyard? Selah (sigh)...

Crows float over reservations, over
blank spots on maps, colonial footprints.
Ghosts of old vexed souls squint through
far panes... their windvane, bloodvein choir

of air, silence, distance. Blackstone, too
(exile, Injun-lover) curls into his cave,
soaks his couch with futile rain (his dry
ravine, his autumn gloom). Wh’cheer, Netop?

Not much. Yet these same barren trees
just now blanched gold, alchemical – rose
flagrant, flush with vineyard glose of
astonishment (choral rainbow-melody)...

He closes one good eye (vestigial retina-
glow, blushing Yellow Sweeting) only to fold
in a trim tackle, passionate wrestling-hold
the whole dappled manifold (soul-cornucopia);

within cloud-rim of funereal sky
reframes a welded reunion of horizons :
tongue-laced, -lashed dome of fiery orisons
capping ruddy mandala (lamb-candelabra)

sunleapt out of limestone clay (warble
of exiled turtledove become foundation-
stone). Enter a dewdrop, mournful sun.
Fly from your autumn grave, leaf-people.

11.23.11