Lanthanum 10.8

8
Man was put on this earth for one purpose : to make civilization
– Joseph Brodsky

So this newborn spring curls from sleep, a moss-
green fiddlehead along the Ms. Riv. A wrinkled
dry Rip (his bones waxed old from dammed-
up roaring). Shaken awake amid squalid chaos –

ramshackle shacks, contraptions, conniptions...
Shady contrail (pine-needle Cézanne). Lingering,
elderly, nearby, Shoshanna (naiad-Diana, fluting
in Renoir petal-shower). O dappled conceptions!

Slanting (double-time) across fishing-grounds,
bass-line salmon arrays. A regnant monarch
butterfly, aimless & amiable (Melchizedek’s
wine-flowy picnic basket – milkweedy lost-&-

found) goes drifting by (through evening arroyo).
With the specific gravity of a lightweight meteor
homing, homing, oh my gal (gringo dem Russkies
O). To a high pine mound of black limestone –

meet Bethel meetin’-place (Ojib’s midé dream-
spot). Secret mental elevation, or lateral L
near as the whorl in Homer’s fingertip (well,
well). Your own heart’s raveling Cyrillic dhowry-

anthem (Sheba-Natasha). Seed-grain, Scythian
tattoo-scar, Ypsilanti-refrain... wild dusty haylo-
fado (out of iron bedsprings nord o’Duluth).
Such be the serpentine bronze signals chosen

to meld like honey-vein in rock. A solidarity
of fern-things first : that we live in a place
emphatically our own (& that this emphasis
is as calm palm on child’s hot brow). Hilarity.

3.21.12