CATLIN WATERCOLOR
Late August light grows lighter. Wispy
between extended shadows.
The cricket chorus has
a song for this, by Mississippi
banks – that bronze sustaining bass
in parallax of plaintive
high-pitched creel. I’ve
got to plead the crickets’ case,
quizzical Hobo mumbles to himself.
What good’s that Easter
Resurrection, if there
be no faery morn, silkworm to elf?
That is, no general coming back
to life... old Yeats’s sense
of unquenchable experience?
Manitou pipes at Fond du Lac...
as in a Catlin watercolor
along shores of Great River
life-lines etched forever
in raven-ink barge Seine-trawler
or in a summer garden with Apollinaire
our flimsy smoke lifting above
rooftops & fading eve of
war Christ the Pilot in the air
over our heads the gentle hero
retiring into poplar-voice
grey Hobo warbling rejoice
inscrutable Holy Wisdom flutters near
8.25.17
