DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI'S DAY
birthday May 12
1828-1882

There was always light
in your woodland drawings
hovering from reshaped colors
of playful joy that we escape to
in your bailiwick's landscapes,
invited to be guests
to your Beata Beatrix
under white museum walls
of the preRaphaelites
which disarms dark nights
to escort us as swans
over the sea and tall towers
to illuminated nascent dawns,
your adjacent canvas of flowers
excavates my transfixed soul
drawing in an ethereal breath
of luminous consciousness
unhindered by post-Elizabethan
and modernist time
after a Fine Art's museum visit
to view your paintings
along the Victory gardens
over the Fenway's city limit,
we had a repast
of French bread and salad
over the park bench's tall grass
at outdoor Sunday's poetry,
arts and musical recitals
in lyrically painted afternoons
watching flotillas of sky divers
by parachutist's fly overs
we walk in a hurry with kites
on paths of capsized balloons
over glad day Esplanades
by easy greensward boundaries
along vivid sunny dunes
in aromas familiarity of nature
as birds circle the spring orbs
leaving us at a miracle sunrise
by showers that made us shiver
like a new May leaf
giving us a flowered surprise
and thrill at grandiose roses
on the very greenest hill
covering a public art exhibit
and privacy view at a bas relief
by the last pine comb and twig
to face the desires of the day
in a narrative's belief at nature
from Dante Rossetti's goodwill.