FROM TORQUARET.
TORQUARET (angel of autumn) Fret lines...time killed at the kitchen window. The hours – diminutive. Outside, the ice of what I’ve lost makes coarse bread of the ground. The frost, a supple bonnet poised on the brink of the hill ignores the upswung gate; retinal – yellow in the failing light. Yellowed with the time it takes in freeze the lower frames, the barricading trees. Like Attarib who follows me in this plan. Who first wrest control of Winter’s great crib, I take the hermetic stance. Carve my thorns curiously back like the rose hips, to attach snow cast at the bombs angle. With the wind spun clear from Saskatchewan - its god blowing the buckwheat down. With the off-end sound of tin struck somewhere exante on the wire,
I call, and the world’s color
returns the color to the field.
Its long face only telling
green,
tonic to troubled ground.
I throw the pendulant moon
into that blue-bumped,
a comma...a cornet changing.
I say there is no moon
so well-blown as the Autumn.
No moon so ochre,
so lonely and laughing,
for once, distinctly male.
I do my deeds as the character
in the second act.
I lay my grids in yellows, reds,
and leave the corn on the ground
for the crows.
I bless the last parchment
rattle of rain as reliquary,
a placard relief to my passing.
Then, like the badger.
With my snickering nose,
I dig deep.
FROM TORQUARET
1991
mixed media
49”x 73”
Private collection
