RIMBAUD BIRTHDAY
OCT 20 (1854- 1891)

An adolescent ever tongue-tied
spinning over the awe
of drawings,maps and words
shadowed by an encyclopedia
opens the windows of first light
overhears song birds
by horse chestnuts
on wide street trees
this October twentieth
imagining aqueducts by
rain shadows of mirrored hail
after sober sweet dreams
as he is being dressed by mother
Arthur beholds the lightening
and girded up thunder
hoping for good fortune
now bent on his knees
by the Virgin Mary statuette
as he composes new honeyed lines
by his garden of Autumn leaves
along the Ardennes roads
now walking with his sister
who weekly takes him to church
for communion and to confess
yet he longs for the wondrous sea
to travel between the sky voice
and earth's remembrance
watching wings of lost sparrows
the boy seems suffocated
catching his breath
looking at pictures
of a sunny Seine river silhouette
by open boats moving
cargo ships in the dusk
all under the darkness
of the call of human exile
by smoke rising from candles
on his birthday cake
he imagines crossing over
somewhere out on the waters
under bestrewn tracked clouds
in a ports search of Casablanca
on a destiny's mission
with a full African moon
by a desert of Morocco
feeling down in his luck
in a long pleated shirt and dress
from a small house boat
somewhere out on the waters
without love or aching caresses
until unexpected tears fall
upon a motionless face
travelling with whispers of grief
he sinks into itself in a day dream
of sweating disbelief
by his visiting seamstress
across his torso by the door
as seen by the painter Fantin-Latour
with a pitying care and relief
unlike the murmuring mistress
and lover Jeanne Duval
trying to wake up Baudelaire
under cover this Fall day
in the fair dawn
as drawn by Manet.