Lanthanum 12.14

14

In the cradle of civilization, in Mesopotamia

a shepherd stretches 6 tentpoles at midnight;

his house forming a little world, set right –

earth, sky, stars, 3rd sky.  Through camera

obscura (liminal minima at apex) rises a 7th pole

of smoke, from his hearthfire.  The ancients say

through that black hole, in former times, a tiny

heaven-stone – turquoise, with scarlet aureole –

plummeted, was pulled from fire... a blazing 

coal.  Shepherds fell to worshipping the stone;

they carried it (cloth-wound by veiled maiden)

on camel’s back, to aid in feuds.  A fine glazing

of gold was wrought around the gem, til it became

more precious than opals of Trebizond, diamonds

of Kalamazoo.  It was the signet of a royal bond

of marriage between sky & earth – its diadem –

imprimature of human home.  & now, a mass

of Quakers, in volcano, gather for silent mass –

the stone (furtive minnaschool, portable mass)

assembles gravity (protonnage) under a mass

of skimming photons... & Man (species-mass)

turns to face the 7th pole, of cloud & light (ol’

Hadrian’s W, colliding motes).  With bluff hello,

one Higgs bison slants across green Oxford pass...

slight air force-particle, breezy Soo Line.  She

who holds the key, surely, to auld dawn song

(Latin, Greek, Calabrian)... it flows her, all along,

odd flower, toward an even Eden-stone (coo; see?).

  6.21.12