A Fresco for Nino Julia Cohen

We bring cedar trees
from Lebanon. Fitful burdens,
this rambling hue. Paths,

players, wraths. We phonetically
float on our own four points.
Brusque bows to dreadful comforts.

We relinquish the vacant
to a dynasty of lapsed scapegoats.
Linoleum and frostbite. We cheer

for the sanguine butterfly.
A seismograph and a fluttered
metaphor. Of the baroque, only

the cherubic escaped whole.
Out there, some strange bird is
dying. Nino, come home.