This Is For You Little Spoon

427 years from now:
When the lights go out in the shoulder of Orion
And we look and say what once was
No longer is (but only in our hearts and our eyes because it fell asleep a long time ago)
May Betelgeuse keep you
As you keep him
With burning orange and satellitic thoughts made on falling stars and dirt clods

You were my barista from Mahomet IL
And then you grew purple wheels like digitalis purpurea and in the
---- PrrPal 5 drove somewhere more Normal
Where we met in a pink and red haze of September thoughts
And your name was Nikolaos
And your name was Victory of the People

So may the People keep you
With a plantigradinal motion we will never know
And perhaps only Mak can keep pace
Let all the population of squirrel-cats take comfort
---- That there is someone as quick as they

May Dove keep your hair intact
And tangle free
---- In aster novae-angliae bottles that curve slender to the side
With head cocked
A motion quick like that of a sparrow
A comparison you yourself may not implore but perhaps cannot deny
Only you and they can dart as quick through the branches of quercus stellata
---- That sits near your house
-------- That sits near a school
------------ That is nowhere near the Nakdong River

Where you are now

6617 miles from now:
When you
---- Like Icarus
Made wax wings
And flew to South Korea IL
A distance not even Niko could swim
Despite your nomenclatural commonality

May Betelgeuse’s brother keep you
---- And not let you fly too close to him
But if you do
Then may you land on a Leviathan’s nose
And may she take you the rest of the way
Where you will be deposited on the banks of the Han
---- And small muskrats will tend you
And they will heal your third degree burns
To stop the secretion of that aster tanacetifolius fluid
So that someday when you return you will feel my fingertips again

Your name Nikollë like that of Albanian singers and poets
---- May it remember you well in eccentrical and esoterical ways
And hair that lives only in hurricanes
Except for days when you use a straightener
For that is like the visual tunic
---- When everyone thinks it’s safe to go outside

But you will stun them
The way the morus rubra reached from Van Gough’s eyes
And they will remember you like the Mastadon
For no other reason than they will revere you for all time

One ice age ago:
---- When global warming wasn’t yet a fad
May the Bering Strait remember you
And your ancestral ties
When I was still in the hills of Geatland
---- With Shield-Danes and monsters
And later to Canterbury
Where we first met
---- Lost in words and stories of copulation and flatulence

Beginning there like all good things
---- With honesty
And undeniable humanication

May the eagles keep you
---- A certain kinship with them I share
Across the Anapji and the Sinyang
With fovea centralis as sharp as the air around where you walk
And in turn may they leave Frizz and Snickers alone
---- As tempting as it may sound

And now:
May the lonicera standishii remain fresh in your heart
---- With thoughts of Dinky and Indian summer
May this and the cheeseburger keep your corpus callosum
---- From the dangers of parapsychosis

May your green sweatshirt hold you warm with its fuzzies
As you write the song of the fajita quesadilla

And may you remember me
Like the potato bug with the petalostemon purpureum heart
---- The one who was supposed to be a beetle
That I sympathized for
---- And the others scorned

May you remember me
And let my words keep you
---- As imperfect as they may be

1858 years ago:
May Ptolemy who found circles keep you Nikolle
---- You LeaAnn
-------- You Keeney
---- And in your orbit
May you always retrograde close to me.