IMPROVISATION #19

Behind the butterfly screen
after waking from a dream
on my daybed
after a novella reading
Melville's "Pierre"
and laughing at the humor
at Nabokov's "Lolita"
after an indoor garden visit
stirring my glass of tea
Russian style
by the lamp's neck and arm
I peruse the Dutch poet
David Muidernan
and put Jacques Prevert
in my pea jacket's
back poet
who always calms me
when I read him
then cut loose
on my motorcycle
clenching a gloved hand
from my urn into a ball
hearing the church chimes
from my corridor hallway
twelve times at noon
suddenly everything
turns surreal
for this poet's solemn funeral
on January fourteenth
with all of nature's chameleons
under the rays of the sun
thinking of an epitaph
of Anais Nin said,
"We are going to the moon
that is not far,man has much
farther to go within himself"
as I pay tribute to one
of the dead.