Quiet river scenes

Some of the chords in this little 2-finger exercise (for Ravenna Diagram) came from a recent article in the New York Times about the Yulong River in China.

LITTLE STEPS

Halcyon late summer day

in the ancient yard.

Soft came the word

from kayak lips... like one stray

Chinese lantern, swinging orange

over weedy greens.

Quiet river scenes –

Yulong threading bamboo (drafty ange

d’or fisherman) between karst hills

& water buffalo –

bull’s-eye, ground zero

for the monsoon spring.  God wills

fish from such limestone streams.

The way to Promised Land runs

through your heart, O branded

Everyman.  Job’s hook redeems.

A living soul talks back to hieroglyphs

until they come to life. 

Osiris in the loosestrife

with French polio – Ravenna stiffs

in sketchy skiffs, rafting a mossy

Giuliana to her sunny

son – sweet honey

from a shack smokehole, in Galilee.

You won’t get it right away.

The flags are thick

with gold encaustic –

targets flip like livid hay

in a tornado eye – the limp

thread hangs from one

thread or another in

a Mandan sundance.  Nails crimp

crumpled limbs beneath a cloud

of starlings... when one

raven, crowing, spun

through your aching pupil – proud

oculus of Solomon,

Galla’s ripe acorn

crown of sylvan

horn – an evergreen

Ravenna Pinetop, skipping 88s around

your retina.  The iris

in her sheaf of cornea is

larval now – pupa plummets down

octagonal, folded to ground –

Hero in milkweed,

featherweight... freed

fiddlehead wing, cedar-bound.

The mountain lurks above the trees.

Imago flies to her source.

Monarch wafts a deft Morse

code in air – needles sing breeze.

A message-smudge, still incomplete,

yet untranslated.

Fisher King... checkmated?

Will fly again lambchild.  Beat?

Through bearskin smokehole, near

the North Pole, Glenn

plays baby Bach again –

so grand, these little steps!  So dear.

9.17.15