pavane pour une enfante

LIMESTONE FRIEZE

The river’s running high.  A tattered

linen cottonwood leaf

would lief be drifting

down the bronze serpent, toward

New Orleans.  January ice

will buckle on the iron

bridge – kids’ tongues on

frozen playground bars (cruel vise).

Hobo’s pal, Billy Apollinaire,

will mime an Orphic flute.

Satie, Ravel... sweet

astringent melody (pure air,

unseeable).  Pavane pour une

enfante défunte.  Meanwhile

male bondage is in style.

Our Master fabricates jejune

disgust for all things feminine;

his orange bonfires meld

fright into towering shelled

walnut eyries... flight from Someone

unaccountable (strange, uncontrollable).

Within a bomber’s O-range

now (I will arrange

accommodations for my sable

granite safety crypt) some Bluejay

whistles like a soloist

through sea-pine mist

sparse knotty blue-green (sotto voce)

                 *

memory.  The threads are fractal,

earth-quick.  Escapees.

Some limestone frieze

of Aphrodite, out of Rimini (or Hell)

feinting assaults above Sault Ste. Marie

(Lawrentian divides

shift icebreaks, tides...)

until the copper icon of green Liberty

lifts torchlight like Hagia Sophie –

her living harmony

of agape, for you

& me, enthroned (Okean-sea).

So like the sun lifting from azure salt

the fellowship of wisdom

born of mute charism

(Love’s lightning catenary vault

of steadfast blooming adoration)

lifts healing rescue-signs

for desolate young queens

& kings of darkened mind, O Solomon;

the little princess Shining Star

pirouettes all morning

in her stone-circling

agate labyrinth (somewhere

near Chartres, Oklahoma) – Ariadne

slips the woolen thread

around your wrist – dead

spring to life (Magdala, Galilee).

10.11.17