8.25.2017

light grows lighter



CATLIN WATERCOLOR

Late August light grows lighter.  Wispy
between extended shadows.
The cricket chorus has
a song for this, by Mississippi

banks – that bronze sustaining bass
in parallax of plaintive
high-pitched creel.  I’ve 
got to plead the crickets’ case,

quizzical Hobo mumbles to himself.
What good’s that Easter
Resurrection, if there
be no faery morn, silkworm to elf?

That is, no general coming back
to life... old Yeats’s sense
of unquenchable experience?
Manitou pipes at Fond du Lac...

as in a Catlin watercolor
along shores of Great River
life-lines   etched forever
in raven-ink barge Seine-trawler

or in a summer garden   with Apollinaire
our flimsy smoke lifting above
rooftops   & fading   eve of
war   Christ the Pilot in the air

over our heads   the gentle hero
retiring into poplar-voice
grey Hobo   warbling rejoice
inscrutable Holy Wisdom   flutters near

8.25.17

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