WOUND SPRING
Weather here in Minnehahapolis
& St. Paul shudders
through ice. The rudder’s
frozen to the keel – Athena’s
buzzing through chattering teeth.
Black Sea, Black Sea! Black
ice. My friend Shadrack
kicks a crust in Voronezh, beneath
malignant stares of a furnished dome;
he will never budge from that line
pitched on his builder’s fine
honey-gold level-eyed home.
Henry’s poem stays put, doesn’t move.
Like translucent ice cube.
Reflecting flickering rube
puzzles along thread-kelson of love.
The singing keel become great little owl
snug in her oak-bole hole
hoots a banderole
along limb lettered like Hebrew scroll
on papyrus barge – some hieroglyph
for hippogriff (abominable
snowman?) – soon to amble
from his polar desert (living stiff);
the high home of the North Pole poem
takes a bead through mica
on that grain of Spica-
wheat... wound spring from vernal tomb.
2.8.19
