SMOKE PILLARS
April is the finickiest month, sunshine & snowfall
confusing the fiddleheads. Atop the bluff
across from St. Paul, three tough-
soft Indian mounds are igloo-domical.
A little further down, the buried poet-man
dreams in Resurrection Cemetery.
& further yet, across from Eero’s airy
Gateway Arch, Cahokian terraces remain –
vernal ziggurat earthworks climb into sky.
The river moves in swerves… &
doesn’t move. A copperhead,
unblinking, eyeing you… deciding – live or die?
Flanking that rushing flickering stillness
the mounds are more than motionless.
How… curious crowds can only guess.
Perpetual smoke pillars curse & bless.
Yet these temples are only an analogy.
Even the priests understood
that much. The man tied to wood,
the woman in flames… perverse apology
in the bloodshed glass – recognition
forsaken. Of the friend
nearby, who takes your hand…
(a glance to the heart, beyond perdition).
These vast mausoleums of bone & ash
frame unwavering grief.
Magdalenian memory, beyond belief.
& the light will not die (dwells in her eyelash).
4.13.20
