I was a Blue Rock Thrush that sang outside
the Louvre, for the art made my throat swell
and the Boreal Owl descended well
into night. Bohemian Waxwing bride
flew a trousseau the size of lengthy wide
medieval tapestries. Dotted with miel
were croissants at the long table; the belle
danced under the long windows of Versailles.
We sang a tune, a lyric of her best
versified Monday morning room lightened
by the sun through the olive velvet drapes.
The library met her moments in rest
with long-dead poets and dames to brighten
the dark—lit wax candles, 'neath my landscapes.
The alpine meadows are spun with millefleurs
and forests of pine, beech, and poplar rend
all of France fragrant, now nuanced, and send
my poems like tiny birds heavenwards.
Wrought iron slants in afternoon and mars
the manicured green's magic haunt, lend
me the whisper for a moment of a thousand
prayers 'round the property's pristine scars,
the battle wounds have gored the trench:
there are cold gashes in the weathered wood.
Light through old lace at the windows' black frame,
the thunderous sky's tenuous grey drench
down clouds scuttling past--broom-coloured oak stood
on hillsides, a missive of gated fame.
I collected the wildflowers and sent
them, perfumed letters, to my love long lost,
I was a soldier in France, grass in frost
froze in northern withered directions, bent,
there was a wind that with it, fragranced, lent
its luminous hue, its sharp brittle cost,
and to its tune a piper's Pentecost--
its denial of any resistance.
It bent the winter trees, they greenly sang,
it bent the nectar spring in maritime,
it bent the gardens of primrose-blue fleurs--
wind, the sea roared, the salt, the sanguine rang;
it braved the Charente coast of ocean's thyme.
I guarded your heart like an art oeuvre.
It is true I loved my enemy death,
black to my white, the err to my person,
the assailant to humanity's son;
my grievance with death is it only perfects
those it loves—makes them pale, protects
them from the harsh rays of the yellow sun,
never shall they burn, cripples those who run,
all you held dear will then calloused defect.
There is a burnished French Horn at the end
when you reach the Hallmark mansion, the lake,
and the Canada geese's wild call to you.
Here you tidy rest, hands folded you bend
to the one faded cloth copy of Blake
on the table, the piano is tuned.
