ALMOND PROW
Snow was gentle over Rhode Island
on the birthday of MLK.
It fell on tenement & highway
& on the gravestones (Irish & Italian)
near Mashapaug – where Narragansetts
warmed by winter fires
sang for their ancestors.
Henry remembered how sun sets
there, flaming the cauldron west of town –
suffusing with rich violet light
(flower of Ocean State)
seven hardscrabble hills. Raven has flown.
Memory like a lonesome sepulcher
is quiet as the dust.
His loves (merged in one ghost
dance) circle Blackstone’s Catholic Oak.
& he walks by dark brooding Mississippi
through brown scrub
like Hobo in an empty tub,
or Orpheus without his head – see
the Maenads turn to friendly tadpoles
wriggling alongside, as
he wails downstream? Alas!
High in his Ravenna dome, haloes
of milky starlight crown a shepherd’s brow.
Mosaic over Memphis
(or Atlanta)... Isis
enthroned, or Miriam? Jonah’s almond prow.
1.15.19
