The world is your enchilada,
Torquemada,
And yet you are less than nada,
The Inquisition
No permanent position.
Partition,
Limb at a time, is not a solution.
Better to be a Rosicrucian,
Much improved by diminution,
Than textbook boss of being sure
That superstition is a pure,
Holy, and sanguinaceous cure.
Yes, it is autumn. You see the pale tinge
The leaves imply. They know what will come next,
But won't admit it. What's a leaf to do,
Feeling its death, but with no voice to kvetch,
No hand to raise in protest? It's a fair
Fall from here and will be crunchy then,
A lot of company, no one to say
There, there, we were quite green back then, you know?
This appeared in Hidden Oaks.
Looking
out over the land of retired bison,
where
Indians haven’t been seen a hundred years,
the
farmers shift their chaw and think of changes.
Maybe
the tractor threw another rod.
Maybe
the banker’s wife had a bad night.
Someday,
they say, the sea will reach Missouri.
But
they don’t know. They’re tired of alfalfa
and
soybeans and corn. They think they’ll sit
up
in their lofts on rockers, watching the tides.
It’s
all in plate tectonics, is what they say.
Me,
I think that grasses and sycamores
are
safer to be predicted here than tuna.
Somehow
I can’t imagine Mom and Dad
parking
their dory in the new garage
or
rowing bagels to Grandma every Sunday.
I’d
like to see the moon reflected in spume
over
the vanished town of Moberly.
I
hear them wish that everything that stales
washes
away and grows a coral shell.
I
like to dream, but hopefulness has its limits.
The elder blossom sees the worm,
Seizes a day and smells the breeze
And moves along. It can't go far.
The Younger Brothers see the cache
And hope it proves they chose the path
That Momma wanted: Nouveau Chic.
The middle sex is villages
And towns along a scruffy march.
They live with Hope. She cheats on them.
These demarcations, falsehoods, if
You get my drift, blur at the end
Of eras, pending scholarship
And bibliographies. Athwart
the elder, berries mark their place
With footnotes, colorful, but dry.
In smog at dawn, such as it was, a man,
A little young to be so stooped, retrieved
With pious care the aitches which were left
From yesterday's conversations. Horses dropped
As well, but letters glitter, even mucked.
He put them in his gunny.
Another man,
Maybe a boy, polished the anecdotes
Piled on each corner. His blue camisole
And tawny trousers, stained with riverweeds,
Implied how long the stories had been passed;
And still they mirrored, rubbed with spit and hock.
The fog smelled of cabbage. Atop St Paul's the cross
Bobbed to the time daws kept. A little girl
Invited passers-by to take her home
To tell their missus what she ought to do
With all them stays and crinolines. She wore
Chapter and verse, and not too much of either.
A constable suggested she might make
The lilies of the field her chaperone.
She didn't seem inclined to heed the call.
In the damp thoroughfare a printing press,
Strewing its papers, signalled for a turn.
Latex,
the private dick opined, but whether
he’d
noticed wall paint or the lissome pants
which
clung to her like wall paint, I don’t know.
When
he said Dames, I guess he didn’t mean
a
thespianette once sanctioned with a gong;
but,
really, only every second line
he
uttered, like a water-damaged page,
registered.
He was grousing about hollow
points.
Perhaps Quintilian had reentered
his
recollection. Sometimes from a dark
outcrop
of fiction odd things clamber up,
with
strappy shoes, peroxide hair, and net
shielding
the violet eyes. Probably not
Quintilian,
though. Psyche with a quirk,
trysting
the night away, seems far more likely.
He
offered rye. Who now drinks rye? The flask
restored
him for an exit, nothing more,
and
soon the transom, last light left, went black.
