Lanthanum 9.13

13
for Chris Kraemer

That bridge in your old photo, Chris (beehive
of hexagonal girders, poised in a mirror-
agon of contrastive weight – taut Piranesi-
pattern)... a quick sliver of dove-

wings flits through those ribs. Flotsam
of memory asway below, sheathed
in snakeskin of crusted limestone (teeth,
bone, shells)... only the river seethes, I Am

& only Time will bind these liquidaceous scars
in one eddying canyon-volume : synthesis
or wave-continuum : the hand-or-eye’s
own natural rest note (a fulcrum-focus).

At Prospect Terrace, the statue of young Roger
steps a stilled foot into the bow of his canoe.
Silence marks his brow there too, at prow
of Providence (lips close upon their origin).

What might ye behold there, by glinting granite
glance – through whisper-facets of the river?
On rungs of welded iron, raindrops shiver
in jointed deltoids, whose spinal height

arcs up to Union (forged from a million
bolts of eyebright)... reaches their hands
(mirrored, multiplex) into those wounds
(ineluctable, irreducible – your own). &

shadows of a Piranesi-body (dove-borne,
Pentecostal) rise from the rails of
sunken Soo Line (sun-thorn, whale-
horn)... eyelash of Beatrice-Magdalen.

1.24.12