NAVE RESTORATION
The American dreamwork seems to grow
of itself, like a vagrant
acorn’s buried descendant
branches roots into veins of air, so –
leaving yourself behind, then
as in a park playground
at dusk, all around
echoing shouts of kids having fun
within the green lamps of those trees
& the circle of daydreaming
grownups, their evening
rest emerging at last – the iron wheeze
of the swing-set beginning to mesmerize
with its creaky metronome –
& you have a premonition of home,
like a matryoshka doll of paradise
or a houseboat nested in a boathouse.
American as they don’t get?
Anonymous as a planet
without name, yet – Isis, Osiris...
A figure stands at the dream door.
They put the body there?
Now it’s not anywhere.
He gone, she gone (to tell them more).
Hobo Ulysses glides toward New Orleans,
St.-Jeanne of the Delta,
Jonah. Coracle fella,
acorn Cap. Nave restoration’s what it means.
5.17.19
