Mooretown Log Cabin

Lives quick and heavy lived-

deeply planted.

Quilts sewn by red fingers

raw

1002 stitches a night before

the burned wick;

scraps dropped on the floor,

weaved into rugs of rippled

colour to

wash over corn manure and

wet wool socks.

Stovefire and soot steep

the familial air, the timbers

where hard wooden

lines run into

chairs and backboards

like a y-axis.

These sun-soaked shadows

permeated with Ediths and

Earls – names no one

has spoken

since S.S. #13 Dawn

recorded the last

under Victoria’s

steely stare.

Snakes

Serpent, sweet-talker, smooth mover

You scaly, greasy snonym for the lemon-car salesman,

heart beating only once per month until you are

pumped alive by the Summer speed of the sun.

We’ve seen you – you poor cousin to anacondas and constrictors,

serving doctors, nurses, and Cleopatra on their staffs.

Second Chinese beast of the zodiac.

You serve, without applause, as the protector from mice, rats, and hundred-legged insects;

Eve’s turnkey to wisdom, and loose females strutting the streets.

At Simonetta's Feet

At Simonetta's Feet

O clear star that with your rays,

how did you live on the earth,

the dirt with all those primal

portraits and immediate

judgements?

She was there to look at;

she was only the façade,

but your life was looking,

 seeing what others

did not:

the colours the shape

proportions, perspectives

and smells. Lifting

the soul

the intellect in front

of the picture.

She was with you to

pose, but you, with

your Portovenere

passions caught more,

the strange

conversation, questions

that arose between the

sitting and the

vacillating. Moments

that only the patient,

the search for substance

bring forward.

And now you stare from her feet,

lying in the earth

below that clear star

a rich core

lost

on a nation of

surface seekers.

For John Keats

For John Keats

I heard you coughing this morning,

smelled the smoke

in the corridor.

The smoke, that hacking cough,

as the director di

Museo, might,

review Shelley’s papers early

with you

this Sunday morning

while the building was

closed and

The Steps

quiet.

Quiet steps down

and I was locked

 out.

I tried to

ring

that director, but

island vacations

had drawn him;

it was only

you

left.

Left locked

in

your eternal

mental end

of beauty and

sickness; joy and

death.

There you stay

As guests and fans; the

curious bore past

your door, past your land

scapes, past your friends,

past where you

Still lie,

past.

Venezia

The dominant colour is of cream,

the smooth, time-honoured white of

aristocratic skins

and museum pilasters;

and yellow, luminous

of limoncello, signs for the vaporetto

or the €4 sandals bought

to stay cool under a hard noon

sun.

This is a city that walks on

salt water, is wound

around it like a tightly

coiled spool of thread,

moving marc and

refuse through the

devoted flow of the

tributaries and

traghetti.

It is glass in window

shops, golden apostles

above lights and

entries of old. Where

ships came in; and were

lost for a pound of

flesh or a walk

of shame of a pick

pocket in a palazzo

of sky-ward masques,

cameras and pigeons.

The striped Grand

gondoliers stirring

Venezia into a cast

spell of Perniccia’s

golden time

held world.