WANDERLUST
Who administers to my needs?
Is it the dandelion, so ant-encrusted, that
yellow pollen dangles from a shiny abdomen
suggestive of some actor's
smeared and garish make-up?
Or the cicada's song,
difficult to describe,
laundering thick summer heat?
Perhaps, then, the Red Admiral butterfly
especially active at the close of day and drawn
to wooden lawn-furniture or the exposed human limb?
If none of these
breathes vigour or tonic
through my nostrils,
what of tubs of fresh water?
Take pea-pods for crude, rudimentary boats
and children as make-shift sailors,
then they both shall spy the secrets of seas.
Bold harbours will be their cues,
astrolabes their hatchets in which
to chart many a perilous adventure.
A volume of Tom Swift and his Motorboat
tames the haggard breast,
soothes the savage beast.
A trip to the fruit-cellar
beaded with moisture
and clammy with imaginary threat,
chastens the cobweb from the
dusty ledge and sees a privet-hedge
hawk-moth trapped against the
window-pane (a dark spot pressed much like
a pirate's patch against both time & space).
If meandering and nearing journey's end,
think twice. Better red than dead. Brooding
MacIntosh apples stain a slippery floor but
the door to the orchard is always ajar.
By night, an "I And The Village" Chagall painting
draws a lad (and landscape) to stare and stare.
Thickets of wild-grape, strawberry tendrils,
two hares boxing in the meadow, a Winterspoon
Whip-Poor-Will towering above groves of walnut, lilac.
Night air is fragrant (and lush) through a peep-hole
and gate-way to the stars.
Barns with ricks contain pitchforks
like a mis-shapen mask protruding ever
so faintly sinister in silhouette through
a visionary sky.
Remnants of ferret skin, lie interrupted,
upon entering the chicken-coop.
The soldier drinks, his tea and egg-cup abandoned.
I don't have to go anywhere.
Dark and moody, there is an
arsenal of thought with stout
marshal batons in my knapsack.
The power to be led (and lead)
stiff memory in rum kegs and wine casks.
The brooding entrance
to another world,
if not in the palm of my hand,
then very nearly
a shout and stone's throw away.
[70]
PASTICHE
These shell-queens, too,
are blithely catpaws,
shorn & musky acorns with
indexed fingers erect
at manicured attention.
II
... Showboats with green faces far as swallows fly,
a lilac in oasis ... scarlet bream
... blue ointment where the ocean is
periwinkle patches,
a robin's egg clarity pressed
between blue-nosed tavern wall
& bottles clinking.
III
See plush cords,
the suede interior
svelte & slinky
an upholstery simonized
with natural springs where
bubbles encounter founts
in apertures, the rich measure
of open ground or mezzanine curtain
slit along a riverine walk
& jungle clearing.
IV
Twilight. Golden tulip. Golden olive,
"Fool's Gold", a lithesome snake-girl
gyrates her dragon-flared, limb-length
tattoo with red-eye dots itching in
emerald waiting; footpaths overhanging
serpentine curves or laser beam
dancer legs, paddle white, under angel
tint of stage-light.
V
The cut off jeans
compete with campfire glow ...
slipping a musket-width, nostril breadth
around turbans, bonnets, bubbles. Murex.
VI
... Elegant white ibises and egrets
stand like sentinels; herons flying in
their wide wings braking and their long
legs dragging ... and the snaky-necked
anhingas flapping and sailing into
spread their big wings
to dry in the sun.
