Austeria

Austeria

It was neither night nor day.
A rise of rabbits in dusty crates girded the shore~~
Lostland driftwood vigil, mute and grey.
I swung barefoot, sweeping the straw air.
The breeze was warm, but the land was cold.
Glass-eye agape, I spun gold sand in my hands
To green fields that opened, stretching up
Past salt-spit stones to faraway pale,
Where the lilac lilted out,
Spilling crepe trumpets,
Violet tumbled glacéed notes.

Skirt-tucked, I wished to run to the fragrant one,
But, I turned away, unboxing my shoes,
Lacing grommets over canvas tongues.
When done, I rose, But she was gone.
A hundred folks spackled over the field,
Bent on writing their own cribbed works,
Troubling rocks, cuckooing through rills~~
Versifying the earth.

A town came up yellow and brown
And I was looking for you in flat places,
where you might have pressed through:
buttons & books badges & signs
Inhaling your name off the pavement,
Querying letterboxes with my palms.

Heat-seeking, I had come to the end of the world.
I found instead a clear pool
Where a little girl held a turtle~~
Black with carmine-etched lines.
She’d let it swim a few strokes ahead,
Then catch it and laugh as its legs pulsed in vain.

While thousands of miles away
The speckled olive damask of the Pike
Moved unseen below the ice:
Waiting, waiting . . . .




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