7.12.2017

one last hurdle, Amelia



DANTE CHAIR

The gazebo’s grime-filmed mosquito net.
The black chain-link fence
in backyard Providence
climbed by Clem (mock-orange? Nyet).

Elegant quincunx in Cyrus-orchard.
Natural calculations
for dames in Netherlands –
to sieve the flux of spacetime (hard

homework).  Oxidized old photographs
curl to brown negatives.
A lime-warp cosmos
rolls up like a scroll of epitaphs

on fire.  So memory seems to curdle
too.  Gรถdel’s fetal pose
(knot of incompleteness).
Here’s the Pacific! – one last hurdle,

Amelia.  Archival snapshot
lost at sea...  your back
on deck, maybe?  Ack-
ack survivor?  Unknown soldier?  Dot

gone a-whaling vast expanse,
revived in some albumen
album.  Icarhea, return
amaze us.  Dad is dead.  All US

mourns you, lass.  Jesus the airman
in a Paris dream   floats
through rainbow dust-motes
light checkmate   first the grain

                *

then the ear   then the grain
of wheat   in the heart
of your ear   lost art
of flying flute   solo   Dakota plain-

song   Black Elk   pilot-fish
naturally Christian
(more so than mission-
school)   so dream your spirit-wish

when the brutal tide of inhumanity
recedes   we will stand
by the shores of Mini-land
bullets   baby hummingbirds   no-see-

ums now   old Green Man chair
of Old Man North   unseen
now too   copper-sheen
bright mold of Liberty   still there

like curule seat of Caesar (Jules)
a Dante chair   Mom spied
in the PX   at Salvation Army
& dragged back home   April Fools!

It’s very rocky   in Armenia
an Abyssinian ark   sleeps
in Paul Bunyan steeps
a Tuscan nurses   meek Elephantea

with yellow ivory   fantasia
folk tales of the sun
shining   for everyone
through rose-glass coracles (acacia)

7.12.17

Sunset (Mississippi River at St. Anthony Falls)

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