Ut Pictura Poesis

As with a colonnade, repetition not only moves through
space itself but, for the viewer, exists in time

The Fortinbras in one is the avenger we follow
in another. Foliage, way out a while back, and wet
still, low boughs. His horse noses through, eyes the size
of plums, and so soon. How was that supposed to sound,
overheard, until overcome? like a poem in which ambush
I crouch, if rooting around for wide new leaves it is I, or fern
the forest floor in patchy opportunity.
The fern
in each new iteration reads the scheme, and like lace
paper pulled, overland portage fits to screen, offering hitherto
itineraries artless except for the way the mind swaps roundabout
for reconnaissant. And reverts. He wears his toque feather
above the opposite ear! we swore in the gay bar
on the gameboard of his likeness, running up
the score on whomever had been high. First sign
we saw, at the image ridge. Or at least it used to be a gay bar.

Where eventually we would decide to merge forward- dawning
with mission creep to condition horizon, which we lost
in a portmanteau, anachronism still
scales this map with vetch at the edges, in an arch,
which gives the open glade an aspect of stage
so that, and so on, the vixen might trot to her moonlit mark
mouthing the tar compound of recent kill, or
an advance man unpack his bag. This is who
we intercept, that’s the play. We wait for the sun to rezone.