CHILDHOOD (from Three Voices: Illuminations– with thanks to Arthur Rimbaud)

L

Black eye of Robert Johnson’s Blues
Hair of Florida’s dusk and dawn
Bastard of no palace

No Lion Heart place
Though more charming
As he played Kermit the frog

Than North’s prince
From far
South fairy tale

Or Flemish tapestry
His crying lot
Of Unicorn

Of halite and emerald
Properties shelter
The strands The beaches

Christened by listless waves
With titles of Sparta
The Celts The Slavic.

At the wood’s singularity,–
The dream flowers burst
Illuminate,–the girl

Of black lips, her knees
Hexed through the knots
Of her elbows In the crystal

Flood rising up

Through fields
The naked goddess
Of Shadows cloaked

By the ocean
The Flowers
In Rainbows