SECOND CHILDHOOD
This is that ancient harvest night.
Hobo curls deep into his nest
of old leaves, with his ghost
of a motherland... everything all right.
The Middle Ages were a second childhood
for homesick gentlemen, broken
by the gears of modern men –
the disenchantment of the sacred wood.
That light-filled limestone in the towns
offered to Mary Theotokos...
or the tart fervor of Franรงois
Villon! Guild banners, pennants, clergy gowns
blazed with a commonality belied
by profiles of sad Synagoga,
goad for theological amnesia.
Her crown askew, her flock must hide.
Mum Quaker Hobo snores now
in a pile of aspen leaves.
Canada poplar sheaves,
he mumbles, to a sunflower (somehow).
She’s Pando in Italian, he dreams.
Largest clone colony
below the surface... maybe
the universe. A raven-glance beams
at prow of her canoe, slips by.
Your motherland is endless,
someone whispers. So this mass
of dead leaves limns one breathing aye.
10.31.19
