by the teeth of St. Anthony Falls

SAY HELLO

End of summer sounds.  A surf

of crickets & cicadas

swells into the branches.

Phantom cottonwoods (leaf-

hearts pale yellow, dried-out husks).

Anemic light, grown timid

spooked by swollen shade –

August forecast (autumn dusk).

Henry attends to his North Star,

his Union under onion

dome... tending toward ruin

now.  Anger drives the darkness car.

Sleek starlings yoked in harnesses.

Electronic neon

beckoning Power’s iron

catalogs (bright pigeonhole affinities).

He stands by the teeth of St. Anthony

Falls – a Berryman

apparition, a ghastly John

lingering by fish-scale cutlery

(zombie ice-fishing is reviving

local watering holes,

say Twin Cities

polls).  Barely surviving

in professional cinch, Polaris

remains fixed in place –

kingfisher Falcon-Ace

tweaked by that wench in Paris

                  *

out of all shape, except a heart-

scarred origami –

Guillaume or Alexei

dovetailing it to Jordan-sprite.

So helpless Noah watches his waters

subside.  He turn to Hobo –

Hobo turn to her.  So

child become grain – grain gathers

to child.  On the scandalous retina

of Mary Magdalen,

the Earth rewinds again

as Man – wrath spun to mattina.

I have no rage.  The otherness

of your... your mother-smile.

He lay for a while

on sands of Jordan wilderness,

at peace.  Your American motherland

is an adamant green

Everywhere.  A limestone

welcome-mat (with waves of eye-in-hand).

It was here before we all arrived;

it was not to be won quite yet

by war, but by legitimate

befriending – loving everything that lived. 

& only a bum in San Francisco

or homeless reprobate

treated like jail-bait

knows Charity enough to say hello

& happy lovey-dovey Thanksgiving to you

8.22.18