Shadrack kicks a crust in Voronezh

WOUND SPRING

Weather here in Minnehahapolis

& St. Paul shudders

through ice.  The rudder’s

frozen to the keel – Athena’s

buzzing through chattering teeth.

Black Sea, Black Sea!  Black

ice.  My friend Shadrack

kicks a crust in Voronezh, beneath

malignant stares of a furnished dome;

he will never budge from that line

pitched on his builder’s fine

honey-gold level-eyed home.

Henry’s poem stays put, doesn’t move.

Like translucent ice cube.

Reflecting flickering rube

puzzles along thread-kelson of love.

The singing keel become great little owl

snug in her oak-bole hole

hoots a banderole

along limb lettered like Hebrew scroll

on papyrus barge – some hieroglyph

for hippogriff (abominable

snowman?) – soon to amble

from his polar desert (living stiff);

the high home of the North Pole poem

takes a bead through mica

on that grain of Spica-

wheat... wound spring from vernal tomb.

2.8.19