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.
____________
and
Dverse Poetics: Leave Your Hat On.