Between Two Worlds

Falling asleep's been a bad 40's play
a gâteaux of allegory
which means no war prophecy

(pending the pact) no Yalta
no mittens knitted for Winter War kittens
just Julie Garfield leering in quotes

a Popular Front cloud in trousers
(authoritarian impulse bitten tersely,
victimhood projected retrospectively)

smoking shorthands the era for tv
but the herbal version won't light
or won't stay lit, non-smokers indicate too much

(under unbunched alders pressed & tendrilled,
a clearing of caterpillars pavilioned
by calicos cotillioned)

Big Syd intervenes like the Coquitlam Queen
between the ball-bearing gaze & its object serene,
a half stop down his priestly collar glows

doublewide thus not washed out
by the ivory suit, while Eleanor walks backward
up black marble understandably but everyone's

moving toward that big Broadway tableaux
with feathered edges floating in a cloud
'twixt anschluss & Pearl Harbor

with a belated apologia for non-intervention
with every view expressed at length
until unlit papers smudge & slap the pavement.