Snowflake’s Mandala

Snow fell last night, the great
cosmos saying calm down; while
everyone slept snow fell, it was
a mantra, it was a baby’s blanket,
snow fell like a Satie recital.

The day had roughed us up,
knuckled our heads with bad news
of wronged women spitting their sons
out like gun spray of pretender kings
rich as Rockefellers smiling down from
aeries golden with syphilis of cracked tales
of pixies breaking bad in the bosky green
of the suburbs.

So backed by a chorus of Bacchantes,
the poet begins to write, his mouth a
rock polisher, wet words tumbling
round and round and round like jaspers
jagged red and red-brown; he is a lapidary
set a-toiling, the air of his workshop floaty
with the trail dust of pilgrims past
his door to settle this night, maybe
this night, under snow’s fine linen.