8.12.2016

across languages & worlds



CEDAR HANDS

O calm August river, weaving
under your ceiling of gray
fluff!  I’d like to say
you are a figure for Edith, rocking,

singing Sophie to sleep, somewhere
above Ethiopian night.
I’d like to formulate
a lamp in a window, out there

on a foggy lump in Narragansett Bay –
Rose Island Light, maybe –
what stands for certainty
in the midst of rocky sea, the sway

of tide.  They’re almost finished now
with the bridge repair.
Her double eyebrows bear
their concrete filigree, & show

twin circles in the river’s glass.
Their delicate embrace
a fractal carapace
for curving lips of one round lass –

a sea-green pebble, calipered
by radiant massive Einstein
armature.  So shine,
my lighthouse pine – like shy brown bird

or Great Blue Heron – one sharp eye
across the moving waters!
Agape holds stars
in loving stillness – rhyming sky

                      *

with earth.  It is an ur-rhyme, personal –
a Neva-petroglyph,
an anchored spider-skiff,
chaste common akme (Eeyore-humble);

like moony pleb with sunny Phoebus,
roaming Apollinaire
with domed Apollinaris,
Love is that hearth-melding force

that fuses Unity & Liberty –
soul freedom is the spark
of arcs.  I found a monarch,
lonely, in the donkey straw you see

down by the iron river (pausing,
perhaps, between White
House & Soldier’s Rest).
We bowed to one another, browsing

sheared grass, cordially.
The song began like this –
a dream made manifest,
Railsplitter... prodigal Boy...

held in grey threads of dog days’
dawnlight.  Soft rainbow
pigeon croon – low
throaty turtledove song-maze –

dream-songe across the meadowlands
of languages & worlds
farfalla-far – she whirls
& jags... floats into cedar hands.

8.12.16

Franklin Ave. Bridge

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