DEAD RECKONING
Henry drooped with the blues, his head
on his hand, his wings folded.
Gloom gathers the Gould
with something other than ghost dancing –
rustic farm implements, tongs
in a crucible of heavy rain.
He knows Great Congregation
= love x God+neighbor, yet... wrongs!
The prophet speaks goldenly of such
in his report (Jack
Joachim). He saw black
where the red-squash bore would touch
his tender rib with a poignard – that son
of a coagulated sow! –
but he rests easy, now
in his little room, in the Forest of Ravlin
I reckon. Jacques & Jules, Jack
& Jill, tumbled off the wall
& down the hill... so we all
fall down, sang the old buried hack
full of Fathom Fifth. His vanishing pint
fled like a bat, through a gap
in his rainbow tooth; sap
dribbled from his dank sepulchre, his mint
of 43 years (32 + 11). She was only 17
when she danced the tyrant-
teller – poky little Calabrian haunt
who yet might spread her wings (sweet halcyon).
1.24.20
