The Aeromancer’s Ode to the Girl of Seem

Cloud slurry: the “It,” that rains

and sets off the big burns out West

has iced the last snow, and the new

veils the slip and fall. Hazard

is everywhere. How do the birds survive?

A ladderback works his red cap up the pin oak—

little hammerhead, black, white, and red like

the old riddle, What’s black, white, and red

all over? The answer, “news,”

meaning print, ink-stink

and -stain, hand smear.

I could read the bird for hours,

but he’s impermanence.

An old friend’s wife who once wrote

the news has married the cold.

I did not see her suffer.

Snow proposes several slow deaths.

A large swath of cotton batting tumbles

off the spruce’s wide limbs, breaks up.

Camus said only death completes us.

My friend has finished her if and so,

her seeming. The keyboard my

sewing machine, I set up the needle,

press the pedal, love the long run of a seam.

Clickety-click says the foot. The engine

hums. It seems and seems.

Nothing really ends is easy

to say if your love hasn’t married

the cold the snow radiates.

The day’s beauty is unseemly, an old word

for indecorous. What is the decorum

of dying, the ceremony

when the Girl of Seem becomes

the Queen of Be

and widows for my friend,

alas, everything?