like an 8-ball in a canyon

HELIUM BALLOONS

Thus the poem is a free agent,

loosed from its cannon

like an 8-ball in a canyon.

We could go on – what they meant

you know.  Dante was getting on

when he stopped by Sant’

Apollinare.  The slant

of loneliness caresses its panopticon

of painterly rainbow eyes & forms,

afloat overhead

like a Macy’s parade

on Thanksgiving Day (enormous

helium balloons of adoration

under an umbrella

of matryoshka nesting-

dolls, like an infinite function

in rose granite aegis, arcs-

over-arcs).  In her eyes,

the grace of God buys

time with molten agape-caritas.

Jesus emerges from the cave.

Mary faints in the garden,

dream bent back again

to Gödel (his suspended-7th grave).

Her incompleteness theorem

is like Easter in 2020,

always there already

(gleaming ring, undying diadem).

12.29.19