HER STATUE
I’m getting older, while the day’s
becoming lighter. As
in Mary Gould’s last
watercolor (Bardsey Island, Wales) –
looking out a window from brown shade
of cave-like room, toward
April greensward.
Frail hand... pale grass, overlaid
with stone outcrop... old walls, old cross
(Romano-Celtic maze).
Delicate spring promise
from an ancient vault (Natasha’s
limping that way now, with me).
Her temple’s labyrinth –
sea-goddess, Amaranth –
only a sheep-door, west of Galilee;
only this frozen winterworld
all thatched with foot-
prints (near that ice-hut
where Henry’s burr-man hurled
like a cedar waxwing to mistaken ice).
Crabapple food for golden
beaks... spiritual gates, folding
for abject mortals (Minnesota nice)
into a paper bird from Paris, maybe –
Apollinaire’s turban
or Marianne’s tricorn
mayhap – dancing a crane-dance (starry
*
sacrifice) with shuttle-pagination.
Ariadne on the golden floor
rhyming with Morning Star
east of Cahokia – her crown of corn
lifting like Liberty (or Spirit
of St. Louis) for a
constellation (Columbia) –
gray-winged Jonah of an old planet
molting to Thunderbird out of the new.
Each Troy-town so will show
her Julia, Iulus, Juno –
or Sophie, prancing here and now
across the parapet of innocence
like dew upon the brow
of childhood’s rainbow –
O bright helm of human sentience!
Behold a Union, fused in fire & light
of soul-transfiguration –
future-human-nation
people, ever-living, stony-bright!
You see that Gate as through an old
& shady window, in a bed-
sit somewhere (in the Hebrides?).
Old stones, light green, grass-emerald...
sprung out of the eternal vault
like Livingstone out of jungle,
where fiery spirits mingle
in a playful dance... – her statue, Walt!
12.27.17
