“Foliage,” “The Specific Gravity of Poetry,” and “Cosi fan Putti”

In the flaming foliage of words:

brilliant colors and undergrowth,

the hedges and briers,

the gorse, the furze of it,

the scratch and tear of it,

the brief flowering amid thorns;

the holding onto,

the holding back,

the lingering over,

the languishing,

the lolling,

the tripping up of the tongue

at the great crown of it

filling the sky.

While I wait for the ferry home

a book of poems in my bag

shifts, as if to efface itself

behind the stolid Thermos.

For so slim, yet heavy a book,

shouldn’t there be another boat,

a tender, trailing behind,

smaller, yet capacious

sitting low in the water

for the specific gravity of poetry?

Its cargo, dense and dark,

lexicon-deep; a buoyant tonnage,

and flaming wake.

So slim, and yet so heavy a book.

A life’s craft for crossing the water.

These clouds appear to be

bulbous arms outstretched

to gather one in, or

lighter-than-air dumplings,

two dolphins touching noses,

or fat-cheeked cherubs

propping their chins on their hands,

peering over a marshmallow bolster.

But who can tell one from another?

I really don’t know putti at all.