Lanthanum 9.20

20

So Hobo slips back into sleep, as of old –
where he’s at home (in midst of the earth).
Axes & hammers have ceased their wrath
against wooden parentheses... now hold

only one limpid terrace’s clear air. Morning’s
milky smoke lay bridled there, in its oaktree
tabernacle; the habitations of cruelty
slept like Rome; the turtledove’s moaning

sheltered thy servant’s quivery leaf-shield
(enfolded, plunging salience... lips’ lyre-
lair... foam-shell). At cusp of the year,
when John-John leapt in the wheatfield

of his trove-tomb : at the Jubilee (that
Sabbath-crown – that end-of-Mayan, 52-
pickup, jade-coral hoop-game). O I.O.U.
of every wombat womb-man... O magnet

fiat, implicate – each etched, emboldened
van der Weyden infant, limned – frescoed
afresh, today! Beneath a concrete cloud
of solid dark, the bubble-level (liquid

pearl) suspends its calm, magnanimous balance;
between that sunray in the portal-eye
& crypt of Minnehaha-Paradise (ebony-
spanned ivory 88s) there is a river-entrance...

you’ve been there, Hobo; you swam
with the 28 young braves, under the sun;
the 29th (like overhanging lichen), doubling...
finished (the day). She loved; you are, I am.

2.29.12