11.29.2016

tender as a safety net



LION’S EYE

The cloudy voice of Okeanos
over snow-muted farms
hums Dakota charms
for fettered waters (under us).

The boredom of the barbed-wire
borders will dissolve,
disintegrate.  I have
a dream, sang Memphis Fire

into the tumbleweed.  Chalk lines
drawn from Grand Forks
to Santa Fe, these marks
scored by tornado, Time refines –

files into church basements & barns
bent cedar spines, weathered
by old sand.  Spare word
spun inside-out by drought yawns

into dappled pastel yarns – gray
background looming, warped
onto rainbear cube (tarp-
tepee tender as a safety net, hey

ey yo).  The fluted planes of brave
Dove-Turtle ring like wave-
tongs on your heart – weave
future pastures from a lichen grave.

Like some drab village near Drobdorf
transmuted by these panes
of plumb green-violet... the lion’s
eye, her peacock metamorph.

11.29.16

Lyonel Feininger, "Village Church in Thuringia (Drobdorf)"
Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis

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