Lanthanum 9.15

15
i.m. M.A.G.

Sunset, walking home up Hope tonight –
a kind of smelter’s glow out of Van Gogh.
A glassblown alloy spun round that rose-
gold eye – sapphire, emerald, set in a tight

brown casket (earthshade). Evening mirror
from a brow just north of Angell Street.
Slim susurrus over the mansion (Italianate,
clad in dark wine) where oak leaves linger –

& you would pine for your conjectured J (vale,
valentine). Imago... my Psyche. So we project
an extended forecast, in familial yokel dialect –
just as you were your brother’s summer double

in that Twin Cities’ dovecote (over the wrinkling
winking river). A part of song (appoggiatura,
grace note) paired with his major delta D –
sprightly, bittersweet, solitaire (a twinkling

clarinet, Octavia). We carry the gilt icon
too close for care : such compatible leanings
as dreams are multicolored coatings, filling
hollers with excess 8th-notes (Pygmalion’s

pig-latin). Hunky dory was the children’s ark
until the last dog bark – a curial star, a rose
of Charon. Then we mourn our double (her ruse
our loss). Under that April horn a’plenty (mark

the date, Sylvester) – by tentative frail tents
of Providence, yearlings of clay. Our moon,
cast in an antique shell (death-mask... pontoon...
fish-fly). Granddad’s bronze bugle. Frankincense.

2.14.12