MAIL DROP
A boat sits on the very shallows
of a lake
in egg-cup fashion,
a tea-cosy covering waves,
orchestrating the bob of colours
in white enamel blue
inverted water.
Afar, the boat is a rasher of bacon
a strip, stripling, stipend
slicing the lake,
distancing.
The boat is an envelope
at the end of the world,
planet-sized, pea-green
about to spin crazily
into the sun at the
end of a rifle-sized
mail drop.
The boat rides amid the
between places of things,
furtive longings
where crones sit within
waiting bushes &
lizards visit skin,
dirge of teeth gnashing
the fringe canopy of
flowing leaves.
[15]
HEADDRESS
Stravinsky's Firebird,
Debussy's La Mer
lilting arrangement like a windmill
with a little Hottentot of a bird
scurrying over leaves
like hot coals,
nest a pudding arrangement,
oven-shaped,
dappled with a string.
She is alternatively
lady of the green shoots,
Empress of an Andes of twigs
for this cow-pie upended
between trees
is fortress and manor,
blockhouse and Maginot Line
careening between the branches
much as a sloth
toe ambles
across the roof of a forest
gingerly stepping on noise,
clinging to velvet footpads,
sitting between shadows
within the roar of a clearing.
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