Lanthanum 9.17

17

Just now, the quiet churchbell plumbed b-flat
across the street. Ash Wednesday evening,
mild as April; watercolor air; soft brooding
drone. Yet thoughts turn round, like Lot

back to that January bridge – the frozen salt
of ice-trapped years (yours, Henry-man) –
the drift-down, say, of one white hexagon
into your palm (taut fiery snow-mote)

...before you go. Into that Resurrection
Cemetery, south of St. Paul... your narrow-
leaf slate silo, camper; your flinty sled, below
Siberian snow-surf (32,000 flakes, fraction

rings of permafrost stenographers). You are
just that far gone, eld Irishman. & yet
your lines declineth too, toward pleasant
faces... I mean the twin cities of Natasha’s

eyes : those agate portals, fusing labyrinth
of threadbare lips – faring with you (by harp
& psaltery) – hoisting you from earthdepth
once again! In limpid eyespan (Arimathea)...

Her tiny snowgrain, set like fire in hearth
a lemon-crumb, a-tingle on your tongue
framed by a train-horn’s rusty iron lung
worn silver now, gone resonant... inclineth

thine ear now, little ant, to green proverb
lifting its brow like tendril of a rainbow-
wing – skyward, through rain & snow
climbing, ellipse (unleavened herb).

2.22.12