Lining the Horizon With Soft Animals
Published in MiPOesias
The sky is pressed
starling. Egg drop soup drapes
the fox maple.
The familial gaga,
the nonce-saga
is that great (cubed)
grandpa Seward lugged
that tree's sapling
in an ale satchel
from the Isle of Sheppey
to plant in our ha-ha,
here in America
near Niagara Falls.
I use the night
vision goggles
to trace fruit bats
hanging from our
sour cherry's branches.
Those hunky-dorys
are sized like fists.
They are night's nuncios
and shaped like nun buoys.
They are ninja
winging nunchuks,
keen to use Eskrima
flail techniques
like Bruce Lee
to get what they want,
like Dante
wielding terza rima
to get what they need-
fresh flies and stale dope.
I use the periscope,
attached to the roof
of our farmhouse
to spy on a pair of ghost
lambs-whose wool is best
for flying carpets,
or so the lineal tale goes.
Sheppey is a word
rived from ancient Saxon
from Sceapige, meaning:
isle of sheep. I've not been
over there, over there, just under
here where our orchard
of Northern Spy is lined
with flak catchers
like punky heather, like
farkleberries and barbed wire
to fend off
subfusc burrowers like
leopard moths and Leopard Tanks.
As a lad, I recall, as a kid
we put out to lake
in our midget subs
to assail Toronto.
I can still smell Argo-
nauts burning at the breach.
That was then, that was
when the skies
were not strontium all day.
Saxon is: software, heavy
metal, a math professor
in Cambridge, England;
Saxon is a website
for German smokers,
a video game with laser-
slashing samurai,
the electronic Beowulf
project; Saxon is: an actor
who appeared in 80 films
including Nightmare
on Elm Street, The Appaloosa,
and Enter the Dragon
and a mutual fund
that is the model of strength
and transparency; Saxon
is Cnut, emperor of the North,
a fencing club
in West London, a kinder-
garten teacher from Perth,
a town in Wisconsin,
a uniform manufacturer.
Saxon is a lonely trapper
in Knutte, Alaska.
My ground-penetrating
sonar picks-up
a warren of lop-ears.
The robot says the snow owl
in the barn loft
is clean as a silhouette,
as a dalliance,
a wet dustbin, tongue
done with mopping for food.
The owl opines:
the robot is lost
to interference.
The family twine
is empty-I got no pants
drying on that breeze.
Is it time for me to go home?
Claim what's mine?
America needs 40 winks
with a wet noodle. Yes
this Yank will lade his quilt
with stars and roses,
with a Jacob's ladder
and cock-a-doodle-can-do
and let's not forget
my material-Hellfire
laser designated missiles
and ammo
for my articulating
weapons pylon.
And of course, a handful
of modest nukes.
I'll sail across the Atlantic-
back to my Sheppey.
Thu ure faether, the eart
on heavenum, sy thin
nama holygod.
The sky is pressed starling.