IDES OF MARCH
for Emily Dickinson
1830-1886)

Driving no love away at night
in my hansom cab
Emily and I ride on a horse

my heart murmurs at her urges
to write poems together
keeping my quiet handsome rumors
of a Beat poet's secrets to himself,
on a mute road full of birches
with icicles hanging on
a country white church
here mourning bells and doves
sing and ring over a winter retreat

in the smell of a scented woodland

seeing dawn come into focus

at first light in a small town
by the bride of Amherst Common
where Emily Dickinson resides,

near the forest of black bears

who also hide out on the Square,
I'm acting tonight as Brutus
focused on the Ides of March
to air out his poetry
by the powerful new branches
waiting for a green spring,

searching for bread sticks
and a Caesar salad
at the Lord Jeffrey inn
and later to attend
a college Shakespeare symposium
and  later to watch
the Visconti's film "Ossessione", 1943

amid emerging birches
in greening of this hour
eyeing fragile limbs of saplings
in gentle tidings yet to flower.