SAFETY NETS
On the vast floor of the nave at Chartres
a golden labyrinth
circles the square. Myth
of primal clay, where everything starts
over... springs up from the ground;
even the epic poem
circles back toward home –
Thanksgiving hearth of heaven, lost
& found. It is an Ithaca
where Daphne-laurel molts
back to Penelope – bolts
from the yarn, like Minnehaha
laughing upstream toward Itasca –
primeval Persephone
(O veritas caput). She
looms at warp speed, like an aria
of Ariel – zips through the Gateway
Arch, to Providence –
races around, from Florence
to the Golden Gate, where she will play
out safety nets, & save the day –
& from Pacific to New York
lift up her blazing fork
of sea-green, Lincoln-penny Liberté.
She is the almond in a nest of nests –
a hollow echo-tomb
from which Columbia will bloom
again, spring-fed by Galilean breasts.
9.20.16
