looking out a window

HER STATUE

I’m getting older, while the day’s

becoming lighter.  As

in Mary Gould’s last

watercolor (Bardsey Island, Wales) –

looking out a window from brown shade

of cave-like room, toward

April greensward.

Frail hand... pale grass, overlaid

with stone outcrop... old walls, old cross

(Romano-Celtic maze).

Delicate spring promise

from an ancient vault (Natasha’s

limping that way now, with me).

Her temple’s labyrinth –

sea-goddess, Amaranth –

only a sheep-door, west of Galilee;

only this frozen winterworld

all thatched with foot-

prints (near that ice-hut

where Henry’s burr-man hurled

like a cedar waxwing to mistaken ice).

Crabapple food for golden

beaks... spiritual gates, folding

for abject mortals (Minnesota nice)

into a paper bird from Paris, maybe –

Apollinaire’s turban

or Marianne’s tricorn

mayhap – dancing a crane-dance (starry

                    *

sacrifice) with shuttle-pagination.

Ariadne on the golden floor

rhyming with Morning Star

east of Cahokia – her crown of corn

lifting like Liberty (or Spirit

of St. Louis) for a

constellation (Columbia) –

gray-winged Jonah of an old planet

molting to Thunderbird out of the new.

Each Troy-town so will show

her Julia, Iulus, Juno –

or Sophie, prancing here and now

across the parapet of innocence

like dew upon the brow

of childhood’s rainbow –

O bright helm of human sentience!

Behold a Union, fused in fire & light

of soul-transfiguration –

future-human-nation

people, ever-living, stony-bright!

You see that Gate as through an old

& shady window, in a bed-

sit somewhere (in the Hebrides?).

Old stones, light green, grass-emerald...

sprung out of the eternal vault

like Livingstone out of jungle,

where fiery spirits mingle

in a playful dance... – her statue, Walt!

12.27.17