MAGENTA DUSK
Airless stasis of the Brown Decades.
Peto’s trompe l’oeuil.
Abe’s wound is mortal.
Funeral train; black silk parades.
One copper penny glimmers in a well,
grown moss-green. Imago
for suffering servant... halo
of ineffable good will. Don’t break the spell.
Was it for nought this Man of Sorrows
took upon his shoulders
our hellfire – that smolders
while his penny ransoms all tomorrows?
Even Old Abe was an infant once.
Loafing on a ship
of milk & honey, lip
curving over smiling waves... a trance
of Promised Land, a river’s dream.
So Henry’s, Hobo’s path
folds under wrath –
collapses bridges into earthquake seam.
Reminiscences of 1865.
An absinthe memory
of rancid statuary
cluttering the dead wasps’ hive.
Disconsolate, they ramble riverbanks –
until the last light breaks
the sky into rose lakes,
magenta dusk. Let us give thanks.
2.12.19
