each poem starts fresh

TROMPETTE MARINE

Soft breeze moves the cucumber leaves

climbing the fine mesh.

Each poem starts fresh

upon a labyrinth the wind conceives

the way Dante struggled like a goat

to rise above the black-

white chessboard (epileptic

knight, squirming from Hell’s dank moat

toward one firefly-mote of light).

O civil wars of cousin

wolves!  Striving in frozen

latitudes of predatory fright-

might, ice-blue treason – all

spite-pirates of the broken

sheep of state – forsaken-

&-forsaking sacrifice!  Ravel

me then, Ariadne, in your primordial

& woolen salience

of J... into the silence

of a pregnant Jubilee, where Piero’s wall

glows in the morning light (& swells

a womb within a cave).

Search the high nave

of the Milky Way – Francesca dwells

up there (with Jenny Littletree) – among

the Shaker Indians, Quakers –

meek paisans, peacemakers –

fused by trompette marine of song.

8.1.16