from Agate Rock

WHITMAN BREEZE

A pink drift of crabapple petals

lights the rust-brown bricks.

Hobo sniffs lilacs

through your gazebo’s flimsy walls

of ragged cedar.  Transparent air

& Saturday quiet;

a tiny spider’s lucid net

shines like platinum from here to there.

His soul’s invisible as God.

His heart beats slowly.

Time in the Family

of Man sways over Land of Nod.

His hammock is a green hummock

where hummingbirds & robins

warble, strum... Someone’s

calling you, Hobo (from Agate Rock).

You loved the looming sweep of limbs,

the creaky oaks in autumn

storms... quick, winter’s come.

The columbarium of paper hymns,

a windy wasp’s nest in your heart,

the melancholia

of sentimental sigh,

chilly memorial... you play the part,

poet.  These lilacs will not last.

Odysseus, in the Sirens’

grip, resists – sharpens

his ears – clings to the swaying mast

                  *

shuts eyes against his blinded sense.

Light tiptoes through, at last.

The shrouded cosmos (vast,

remote) circles a pilot’s evidence;

the pole star of his meditation

lifts into incarnation

(ark of a nation

anchored to her own grave station).

So Hobo’s apple petals scatter

in a spring chaos.

The Minotaur lurks close.

Greed splits matter from anti-matter,

rigid red from angry blue.

These violet bowers

dangling sweet flowers

bend over you in vain, Hobo.

Your dark twin leans from Golden Gate.

Her black hair beckons toward

the deep.  Only my Word

is closer to your heart, shipmate –

your heart, & hers.  A violent order

is a knot of pain, a riddle

of ingratitude.  They fiddle

while my planet burns, smolder

in contemptuous hate (for neighbors

not their enemies).

Mauve Whitman breeze...

salt loveliness of tide’s martyrs.

5.13.17