Madrigal

Winter blowing and a tack of ice, lack
Of lice on itching skin, the wrack of flims
-y love is in the air, in hardened sins
Wilting and digressing, the flower-backs
Like ball-sacks drooping, looping
Of the settled seeds. Verona's plucked the blossoms
And garlanded her tresses, thick usury
Of every umber absolute, sunsets
Overwhelming coasts with flooded luxuries,
While bay leaves flutter with exotic teas. Mind
Struck numb by the cold of passionate faces, dumb
Signs sticking in the jabbed ice, rice
Paddies of white cocaine that powder Ceres serious,
Rattled by a shuddering wing, fat owl and the king
Of frozen doves, my love:
Where are your icicled pickaninnies
Now? Such a long garland of limbs crusted over
The pine trees like sentinels of autumn
Color has collapsed into a rooved rafter,
And the drafts of laughter settling after
Taste the soupy lakes.