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Rodenkirchen 

You can trace bullet divots
in this brick with
your finger.  A heritage of 
smoking thickets, sometime ago
vagrant scents, azure first
century Roman glass, a lone
single column-inhabit still
Corinthian silence-crumbles
slowly, unnoticed as
conquests of wind between 
her thighs.

First Isis holds the child, then
a mystery: it climbs into 
virgin arms.  Bronze
breasts, dripping patina, the 
word thicket returns.

"There's a duck in my mother's garden"
"Duck?"
"Yes.  He was here yesterday as well and my mother do
not like him."

Through the window, a muttish terrier. 
Realize, without laughing, Leonie 
meant dog.  This is how
close dogs are to ducks.

When Semele gave birth 
to Dionysus, towns
people murmered, in 
firelit burrows, the meaning
of like and as.  

For nearly 3,000 years
the mother of a god held 
a name on her monuments
quite similar to simile.

"And what will you to do with the duck?"
"What should I do?"
"Kick it, or hit it with this book!"

She would have no regret.

When dogs arrive, tearing
into the soft bones of Orchid Phaelenopsis
literature becomes a weapon.

Think of Stalin, call home
when you get there, and that could 
mean on your way passed 
an old man and drooling, fresh
out of crumbs for the pigeons  
he'll notice what you're attempting
by balancing a half-eaten apple on your shoulder
as you shovel through
your bag 
searching for a book of sonnets.
After translation-I won't tell you what it means
When you have an apple near your ear,
He laughed, shaking his penny loafer in the air.

When you make it all the way there
to Solaris' grave
send batteries, a flashlight, hum
Bach when you write your
postcards.  And, should 
you sleep, grasping your
crotch on the train, be kind.
tell your grandmother 
the things she misplaced, ye
never had, are in storage, in 
a sort of storage on the brief cold sun.
Tell her the rain is always scented
and so you are and so you are home.

"The roses grow where flesh once burned."

Hearing this, she, reaching 
her near-dead hand under the table
will gently pet her duck.

We're all content now.  Hitherto
nay
we nap.

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