A Brief Instruction On Style

 Many hands make light work

and many hats make the Hydra happy,

thus, the night shift at the haberdashers.

Dig the butterscotch factory windows,

the glittery silver mercury pulse of industry!

Have you ever felt the urge to relocate to France,

reinvent yourself as a nun in a nation where faith is an artifact?

You and Saint Joan and a renegade postman

delivering visions, swordplay, and cafe au lait around the clock?

I have spoken to the Hydra with its ruby eye and hissing susurrations

hidden in a yellow profusion of forsythia.

It keeps a Wurlitzer and baseball cards and the Cretan Bull in there with it

and the beauty of their hats makes statues weep and flagstones dance.

Whether fez or porkpie, bowler or kepi,

one cannot think without a lure for angels atop one's golden dome.

Whether wide-brimmed or ostrich-feathered,

loveliness must begin nearest the seat of the Divine

And the Hydra with a set of nine, waves like sea grass

by the coastal shores of Nice

with the haberdashery humming behind it, all lit at night

like a cause,

a very banner 

or a blue streamer above the brim of the shining world.

____________ 

for Word Garden Word List #17 (Joni Mitchell).

and

Dverse Poetics: Leave Your Hat On.