Some twelve hundred miles off the west coast
of Africa, on the crater rim of a long-extinct
volcano …
Sixty by sixty, ring of sand.
Fleastorm on a kerchief of white calm,
or watery blue, giottoed with red
to god’s-eye the overturning cloudy miles.
A swirl of cyprian wind
and the eye appears to blink,
small garden made imperial
by the tiny caprice of an exile’s island.
In the awful, silent, pre-storm summer hour,
one listens for a sound to claim dominion,
pretender to a doomed, weak-kneed dynasty.
A weathervane fluts in the garden,
spun by saboteur winds,
provoked to a pitiful clucking
over here! .. no! .. there!
Its confusion is an enchantment,
barbiturate to the most driven
heart, Cassandra-hen
of ‘flut-flut-flut’.
Gate-crashing wind,
ungodlike in your humor,
be civilized, be brief.