What came next

Calluna 1 42 x 56 cm acryl/dispersion color/oil pastel on paper

WHAT CAME NEXT

                                             Bright gods and Tuscan…

                                             … and the clouds bowe over the lake.

                                                                   Ezra Pound, from CANTO III

Getting tired of the city, rats playing

In the garbage, the self-conscious rudeness

of  people trying too hard to be ugly. In my writing

I’d like to put gods in the trees and nymphs, etc., but

down in the basement, where the pit bull is chained,

a handful of maenads are smoking crystal. Hopelessly urban.  

Meanwhile in Italy Poggio still makes wine in his frescoed villa

near the river Arno as if there were no modern world

or post-modern or any which way you prefer to   

label what seems to be happening right now. I’m thinking of

doing a reboot that will have me walking through a vineyard

of my own.  Wearing a straw hat and baggy white linen suit.

It’s too bad the thin gurgling of water in the cistern has to

remind me that everything is running out. Bills are due. Hammock’s broken.

In the deep cool shadows of the front porch Karin

is painting my state of mind. It’s part of a

series, each picture a little bit better than the last. I break

into a two-step, attempt a pirouette. I hear paint hitting canvas.