These giANTS

peter out
by halifax
I’m a big fan of Don Quixote
even read most of it in Spanish
can’t say I understood it better
a flock
of quixotic
infuriating
Formica
foragers
file forth
I idolize that old man, the character
he’s a coyote, an oblivious trickster
making me believe he is real
these stoic soldiers
in full regalia
quest for Eldorado
past spice mills
He lingers in dulcet tobacco smoke
plumed by a fine pencil mustache
with a point antennaed to a smile
their spindly legs grind
past fall cotillions
of busted peppercorn brides
wall-flowering lifeless as ashes
having cried dry pineing
after late groomsmen
I want to take communion for him
break bread with La Mancha’s ghost
put my heel to his passing through
these ants march on
past former foxhole fighters
dashing in white tuxedos
spooned together in trenches
scattered willy-nilly
behind enemy lines
This suspended cloud of disbelief
is a pack mule resigned to the work
of weathering with me everything I do
each grit waits to waltz home
with a masculine reluctance
masking more than can be made
from salt lost tossed and left behind
these preoccupations
are barreled over
by the stalwart panzer division
too busy to dance
these ants
since there’s the syrup
not sixty paces away
enough to make the heart
pound for passion
for more sugar
more sugar
and more
found and passed on
through word of mouth
by a bloated hit parade
of swaggering Sancho Panza’s
all trundling back home
to throw up
on Dulcinea
the full bounty
of their findings
Cervantes set lance against me
he tilted at my title character
ran through the millstone hung on me
and left my mind engaged, spinning
Their queen
she labors
in time to these
the windfalls
making a music
in sleeping children
a quiver of echoes twirl
unspun all over their faces
until they know what they want
to do for the rest of their life
search out the source to drink it dry
and bring this farce to an end for good