Arch

POEM--
built from tattered pop cultural materials that arrive from time to time at my doorstep

HELLO.

From the plains of America
As the motor of World
begins to lock up
And as I try to be
in a somewhat delusional way
an economist
As the fabric of life
seems ghostly gossamer stuff
and I fail to turn the doorknob
at the Entrance

As I imagine myself
as Magician of Light

It has
(I say too soon)
All Ended

And what is it all for
What is it all moving towards?

Here there are faint outlines
of the lights of Home
in a reflecting pool
Scarcely visible
through subdivided subdivision homes

And as God measures the light
And as God divides a dollar

Where are our minds?

Rilke would say
"In a dark time the eye opens"
For fuel to go forward
Pacing and smoking of lunatics
By the light of Luna
Endlessly

As we all withdraw
to our "fortress of solitude"
no longer men of steel
but something else very fragile

With no time
for a phonograph record
Or a song
Or a dance

And returning again to the bottom line
The Automotic Industry
Has a glitch
A broken beltway
Because it cannot measure or fathom
What escapes a time cycle
Or an Arch
to enter some Western Civitas Dei
Alongside some River...

And returning again to the bottom line
"today's Tom Sawyer"
lives amid some economic gears
of ripple effects
as Chicago's polis
cascades Southward
in ways Sandburg could not envision
along the mighty
Mississippi