down around Kay-Rho

SALT-LICK

Prince Henry Hal, like a latter-day Latrobe

went surveying his great property

in swamps – following Path P

down around Kay-Rho, mapping his globe.

& he was most lost.  Loster than lost.

His sidekick Hobo sighed.  Said –

this palm at the end of your mind

holds an eye that glows, a wave-tossed

moon.  Pearl, embossed with diamond

& ruby… emeralds for eyelashes.

There, where kingfisher splashes –

a quatrefoil rose window, set in almonds.

Notre Dame burned down today, Hobo.

The blaze destroyed the spire,

almost the whole… – F’ sho.  Fire

will do that.  But there’s another one, y’know.

We already passed that house.  Down MLK

Way, on Black Elk Boulevard

(in Buffalo).  Look hard,

Henry – you’ll see him sign the X-tree

with his finger… mark the six trails

like a phosphor Southern Cross.

His medicine mends every loss –

’twas his last full measure split the rails

like lightning.  Now the brave who give

their lives to heal the sick

come to his green clover salt-lick –

circle the hearth-fire – bright, contemplative.

4.15.20

of the clay peoples

PEACOCK’S EYE

Path P stretch in six directions

out of Cairo, Huck,

sez Jim – any way you look.

One of them north-south junctions,

I reckon.  There was a labyrinth

of red clay trenches –

dead men in its clenches

like flies hung in a spider’s tent

– heavy that clay, so heavy!

Like the bottom of the sea.

How could a little child be

dancing in such dismal gravy?

She’s Pueblo, of the clay peoples;

they put away wrath before

the sun go down, f’sure.

Lookee there.  & through the peephole

of his fingertips I saw (obscurely

as that garden of Sheba)

a lightning pathway – Sun-Ra

threshing floor – arisen merrily

from ripened Flanders wheat (so

melancholy).  Like Van Gogh

seized with a fury-glow

of happiness... Persephone?  O

yes!  Threading her crane-dance

through a peacock’s eye –

purple Hagia Sophia’s

woolly poncho-swirl (at cave-entrance).

5.24.16