Hobo was King of Mars

AUTUMN VESTIGE

Observe the canoe, in the dusty garage

in Ferrara, if you can find it,

she said.  A Star of David,

sewn upon spectral autumn vestige

of threadbare overcoat, shines

in the gloom of late October

day.  My hobo-mutter

fritters into golden leaf-combines,

disintegrating fleets of ripeness.

August limbs go plain

beneath afternoon rain;

the tree stands like an empty chalice

ready to be topped with drifting flakes’

archaic frozen stars.

Hobo was King of Mars –

lifted up unto a throne of rakes,

crowned with a pile of leaves; his head

was a planetary pumpkin, &

his magic rattle-wand,

tufted with scorpions, was made

of lead.  The heart shrivels with dread

& melancolia

until the Tauromachia

twirls, milky moon... lifting the Dead

Sea of All Souls’ into a strange orbit

of anti-gravity –

like your gallant oak tree

that lived 600 years upstate

                    *

whose trunk was broader than her height

whose acorns sail

from Hudson to the Nile

& carve a reedy vessel (upright

Osiris in mosey-miroir)

to tack the ark of justice

toward mild Providence –

I hae ne wroth, her murmur

filtered through the Pharaoh-mask;

I am the Shekinah

behind Who-He-Who-She;

I am your Miryam at the matrix,

almond salience, unflagging J.

The stars waltz gently

round the Pole... we

dance beneath them, in a play –

late romance of a shakèd spear

or rustic ferris wheel

where Smolak will repeal

the bearish curse, the hunter’s fear.

Hobo might head back home again

to Basking Ridge, above

the Rio of the Turtledove...

a furrowed nut, a graybeard brain

whose love came surging from the sea –

a tidal wave of hungry

soul (his coulombee).

So turquoise panned gold embassy.

10.17.16