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