Lanthanum 10.20

20

the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice

Hobo didn’t need much : just to watch a little

willow spar swing lowly in the breeze, enough

to send him into trance-lit ecstasies.  Puff-

ball of nature, he bends his face to the Delta –

all that vagrant extravagance of everything

South.  This his faery pilot knew; her antidote

a strip of willow bark, sprinkled with sea-salt

from the Gulf; she hands it to him, saying –

this willow’s salt & sour taste will help you

keep your distance, Hobo – you, prod son

of dusty Adam Bum, first good-for-nothin’ –

who forsook God’s lofty lifetree for the yew

of cemeteries. & he beheld that great wide

field & swampland, flush with green & streaming

traffic – gargantuan White House replicas, mean

shacks... ear-shattering roaring scaly rhodo-

dendron dragon-place – unspeakably multifarious

complex, uncontainable... & heard her whisper :

you cannot rightly love earth’s florid splendor

nor ever share undying joy, until you sense

in the Gulf this dream’s supernatural source.

Look there.  With willow stick she waved off

the clouds – & Hobo saw a simple cenotaph

of stone, immovable, in cobalt-blue susurrus

(Jordan-stream).  It was the gravestone of

a kingly king, beside his spouse – asleep there

in Atlantis.  Who’s alive, who dead? his teacher

crows – the one who knows what love is, son.

                           5.10.12