Frost, Ubi Sunt

Nothing there is that loves a window:

anything happened in the pause

between the as if of orange and the because

of the road.  Which the lion crossed,

renuded, for fear of his shadow.

Faith?  For pebbles of quartz?  For nonce,

for naught, something she said:

“I think I planted one, a purple triangle,

well, a flower for all that, okay, an acre

of weeds, but they are beautiful, too,

n’cest pas?  Or oui?”

“You can’t let mute things like feathers,

for chrissake, deregulate your lefts and your

cames.  We got walls for reasons, y’know,

and how many ways you gone look out

that winder at flours mealed,

stoned, risen and frittered?”

“Begonias, Pomonias, Patagonias,

Cunnilongias, houses, stars, and roasts.

I need to learn so much about grapes

or satisfaction, I’m cleft,

you know, sworn in two,

with rooster in hand.”

“Borrow my ax, cleave completely, 

and leave a wing under the eave 

for ornament.  Ants have craters.

Who knew?  You’d have to be

an anthomologist to even want to put

them under a microscope, count

the filament of the cilia on their

petioles.  Poor apocrita formicidae.

How unhappy, how close 

to immortality, how far away.”

“Did you wind walls today? 

Were you viewing hills through woods

and fields?  Is this why you’re bitter?”

“I wended not today, I porched.

I saw tricycles at swim, I saw

a shoegum gatherer, I watched

Christmas trees, I watched paw-

brushes: I heard a telephone

make a sound and was glad 

at its newness, this marvel,

so glad I stayed porched through

its howl (it stopped, alas, and I

missed it, not much); I waited

out a November guest, and

Christmas came at last, hoo-

rah! and gone to town, hoo-

rah!; I was stung by a gentle

wasp who mistook me for mate,

and I, annointed in the moment’s

passions, missed him fierce when

I swatted to squash him; I saw

a dragonfly with windowpane

wings and wanted to inch closer

to see the world through a gossamer

haze but remembering the wasp,

kept my distance; no good protest-

ant saints to a wandering this way

come, so instead, I invented good

reformist relics – straw of leper’s

bed, splinter of cripple’s crutch – 

and buried them in my loam

for future finders to exhume

and praise; I spit a grape seed

at the old copper cuspidor, lone

in a corner, but it bounced

from the rim, my true aim I did

not miss, and found home

at the trellis, and now the porch

is vined, aswamped in the fruit

from which the future will glean

wine; I have come to laurel

this forgotten hope, and instead

I rust with the other links

in this old bench’s chains.”

“Your tongue gives salt or sugar

to the banes of your chill, your

hand blackened instantly by

day-light, the merest spurl

of a cigarette’s smoke, a gas-fire

in the hole, going to burn

the hymenoptera queen back to hell

from which womb she sprang.

Lick the flame at its blood-root,

yes, with taste of mud-rut

and all.  Succor in the grains.

If it scares you, what will it do 

to us?”

“Slay you.  Or banish me.  Scare you, maybe.

For the wounds of day and war,

prepare you.  I’m audened to death

by the minutiae; leaves me gray and cold,

stead fifty above but ninety below.”

Leaves this shadow from its perch,

this timid spent sense of what is best

and what is less; 

we are determined,

unlike before, live this haunt

from anthill to sod.  

We sink lower to know:  

this was ours, but

what is left for god?

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas- All Rights Reserved