So long to the papaya       kingdoms

                 Of olden mothers,

                        The shepherdess igniting

Peels of bergamot.

         Grief of chalk

              Scribbles the form of an

                                                    Archangel.

                Consider     a pillow of mortars,

How the rubble of hair

Weighs dense together

             With the pedestrian heft

             Of never coming back.

Home is a sleeping whale.

               Consider an armor

Of feathers, not to buffer          the body from shelling,

         But to be hoisted

As a skyless meteor fleeing for

                            An elsewhere chance

                                                          to land.

You will come back

To rescue your footsteps.

                  Towels spread on a road

As if forming:            timeline

                                       of cotton against

                                                  A pillared topography.

But this, the clap of hands in crisis

         Shoveling out evacuees.

                               Empty your opera

                                       In the howling of the sea.