Weather

This is the month air spits out June,
pretty June of the freight train’s roar, of stress
churning funnel-like—June of the placid moon
staring blank-faced down inside.  Winds obsess,
weave in and out.  Think of a basket,  snake
on snake, a nest of vipers writhing.  Moot,
the celebration of who lives—cake
is icing, taste is life itself. A beaut,
the sucked up voice vanishes like a Garbo
smile, like the Listener in Beckett’s play.
Air twists the wrung out rags of clouds, takes a hobo,
takes the nursing infant’s mother.  Gone, as day
turns coal, as Death taunts, shakes his rhinestone
scepters, reeks of grim cologne.

But something’s turned on edge—just see what June
inflicts on hot July, expectation? Stress?
No—though something steals the August moon.
The hour’s dusk and we obsess
again on what to eat, coil snake-
enjambed, limb on limb.  Dessert is moot
now that we’re filled, devouring (cake-
like) each other.  I read your skin, read beaut,
as beaut-iful, the aftertaste of sweet. Garbo
can have Alone, Alone, her game, her play.
You, haunches swinging under your hobo
chic, make Sunday every day.
You, facets dancing from a rhinestone,
scent the air with new-mown hay’s cologne.

Yes, for the poet any day in June
will do.  A bud’s soft green or even stress
can birth a sonnet, say, about the moon,
poor beleaguered over-written moon.  Obsess
and write, obsess and write—or snake
through both to dream of blue.  Moot
again the swirling winds, bouts-rimes not scanned, no cake-
walk here—but give it time. Beaut,
I start and cross it out, think of Garbo,
of her mask, her barely smile, play
with exhausted words, tie them as a hobo
ties his clothes with rope.  Is this a sonnet day
I wonder, a day to write the yellow
rhinestone white?  To wander, slant-rhyme roam, cologne?

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