Lanthanum 7.16

16

Gray Seekonk ice is gone. Your river’s royal
blue today, Blackstone (kingfisher blue, maybe)
& trimmed with white ‒ a roving, silvery
sheen. Where you crossed over with your pal

Roger ‒ flinty Pericles of curious lone-
rosy city-state. You more quiet, private ‒
no less stubborn... the one who went
to live with Indians. The record’s scant, sown

on fearsome wind (your library, notebooks);
you’re somewhat anonymous, like a historical
Jesus (who avoided interviews) ‒ typical
Everyman, like her, me... & this the crux

I would sing, this quiddity : in chaste eye
of Aristotle, Blackstone, Joyce ‒
a sea of ex cathedra cymbal tones
that ripple from the stem of every ordinary

Dublin bloom. The deep & potent human faculty
of soul, whose pregnant salience is the spring
of springs ‒ its clear Itasca hoisting up
Big Muddy time : for every pain & difficulty

here is the matrix of a healing symphony.
It is a qualitative change, a change of heart
that comes on incognito... unremarked & quiet
as a dove’s low anthem, cooing from a factory

of forlorn bricks, out of a central fall (Babel
to Babylon). That building salience of song,
lifting ‒ as when a grim lambda, unstrung
on the retina, turns over... into smile

(El-trove, Red Rover, veltro). You know your eye
has something of a Finnish curve (like Saarinen,
or Tuonela)? Like a Hopkins lake ‒ deserted oasis
where Franks met Steins (for wedding, by & by).

2.20.11