DANTE CHAIR
The gazebo’s grime-filmed mosquito net.
The black chain-link fence
in backyard Providence
climbed by Clem (mock-orange? Nyet).
Elegant quincunx in Cyrus-orchard.
Natural calculations
for dames in Netherlands –
to sieve the flux of spacetime (hard
homework). Oxidized old photographs
curl to brown negatives.
A lime-warp cosmos
rolls up like a scroll of epitaphs
on fire. So memory seems to curdle
too. Gödel’s fetal pose
(knot of incompleteness).
Here’s the Pacific! – one last hurdle,
Amelia. Archival snapshot
lost at sea... your back
on deck, maybe? Ack-
ack survivor? Unknown soldier? Dot
gone a-whaling vast expanse,
revived in some albumen
album. Icarhea, return –
amaze us. Dad is dead. All US
mourns you, lass. Jesus the airman
in a Paris dream floats
through rainbow dust-motes
light checkmate first the grain
*
then the ear then the grain
of wheat in the heart
of your ear lost art
of flying flute solo Dakota plain-
song Black Elk pilot-fish
naturally Christian
(more so than mission-
school) so dream your spirit-wish
when the brutal tide of inhumanity
recedes we will stand
by the shores of Mini-land
bullets baby hummingbirds no-see-
ums now old Green Man chair
of Old Man North unseen
now too copper-sheen
bright mold of Liberty still there
like curule seat of Caesar (Jules)
a Dante chair Mom spied
in the PX at Salvation Army
& dragged back home April Fools!
It’s very rocky in Armenia
an Abyssinian ark sleeps
in Paul Bunyan steeps
a Tuscan nurses meek Elephantea
with yellow ivory fantasia
folk tales of the sun
shining for everyone
through rose-glass coracles (acacia)
7.12.17
Sunset (Mississippi River at St. Anthony Falls)
