Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

The clouds make way,
open a blue door with a streak of cirrus.
Something in space, some presence as vast
and drear as a forgotten god,
as real as that bond between things
and the words which distinguish them,
something shudders in welcome and joy,
sings to its brethren, A poet is coming!
2
Even Mars leans jealously near,
hoping for one last chance to catch her.
They need a Sibyl and a female bard,
word-knitter to ever-shifting beats.
Chanting they watch the earth star’s orbit,
thirst in their salt-sand necropolis,
not for a transfer of water or warmth,
a trout or an apple or a flying cow.
No, Mars needs poets, too!
Let her come as her final years revealed her,
purblind and limping and ragged,
shield-maiden to the last, welcome
so long as she comes with words on her tongue!
They watch the flare of coronal light
burn from New York into stratosphere.
They hold webbed hands and watch the meteor,
tektite incarnate with olivine eyes. They wait in vain:
she leaps through Martian air in overshot
toward the all-embracing arms of Jupiter.
(She called him Wotan, Wanderer,
cries out as she sees his great red eye,
his overweening gravity.
His captive moons sing out in chorus
At last, at last — a poet is coming!)