Winebibbers Go Home
A crimsoned valuation
picks the motors of pentaculated
runners on a field of display
a hoax or an alarm.
It used to be the columbine
attracted hummingbirds and star-clipped
in a summer’s hottest tranche.
Now wintry spotter’s net
must catch a feathered red
to charge against the wickets
of a ghostly bricolage
a breach to ease the canted branch.
If weakly cardinal in cold
well stretches light’s delights
temptation ardently to spar
with gloom’s adherents snipes.
Where seeking bred of seeing’s heart-
flash if a stranger to an anger
braised the coals the scarlet
sparks not in the day played in the dark.
A tang to spin the spangled manger
underlay the helicopter hats amid
the gladiolas and poinsettia.
They drew the straws but kept
away the cats. A sanguine sprat
could stir the faintest blush
so let us taste the lips’ best rush
of comfort in the common claret
all ablaze and brandishing the fadeaway.
_____________________________
Robert Mueller is the author of Hereafter Knowing in Sonnets and Their Similars, an adventurous undertaking in literary history and critical interpretation under the signs of philosophy and theology. Other recent writings to his credit include a poem in And Then, poetry of an unusual stripe in Home Planet News Online and, in Spinozablue, a group of poems focused on the topic of our precious wetlands as well as an essay titled “Petrarcan Naissance.” Robert has earned multiple academic degrees, a PhD in comparative literature from Brown University, an MA in classics from the City University of New York, and a BA from Yale University. Among his major publications are essays and reviews found in Jacket2, American Letters & Commentary and ELH.
