Indomitable busker

It's a mystery to me (a mystery for which I'm grateful) how these long pilgrimage-de-Henri sagas adjust themselves to my own contingencies.  They round themselves up in their own good time.  We are told art is practice practice practice, & maybe that's what it is.  "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will" (Hamlet).

For example : I'm moving to Minnesota in a matter of days.  It's been a roller-coaster year, yet this Ravenna Diagram thingum has persisted, kept on keepin' on.  Now - a few days before we leave, & in the midst of much pack-up anxious biz - the fourth chapter of the poem, and a big structural cornice, draws to a close, seemingly in a fairly-fitting fashion (how can I know).

I'm thankful for the poem time.  I'm thankful for the moonshine of this little Ocean State.

EARTHY TAVERN

This polished late October light.

Burnishes each diamond

of the backyard iron

fence.  One survivor-cricket

churrs behind spruce (indomitable

busker).  Over the rail

a wave of clematis still

surfs; the massive parasol

of luminous russet dogwood leaves

still braces (on its sturdy

mast) against a gusty

autumn breeze.  Halloween in the eaves.

I’m leaving very soon.  The golden

spider packs his poison-

bag, curls (frozen)

in a thread-vortex.  I be beholden

to my Ariadne.  In her hazel eye

the gold lambswool, yellow

Corn Maid poncho flow

into one clay design – pendentive sigh

of wild oats panicle (brown

dangling bird-feet

elegant & neat

as many-rimmed Ravenna urn).

My host is flown.  Like Stella Maris

over the ridge, at Swan

Point – pivoting on équinoxe

de printemps (April 12 it was

                    *

this year)... like Beatrice’s Florence,

born le 4 Juillet – or taut

Francesca, by her net

of Inca wool... ou sont les neiges,

maintenant?  They’ll ride my splintered

coracle back home.

Or (gone threadbare) roam

my prairie west – O mulish cowherd

wind-wag, tickled to Frisco Bay!

Morning Star, look homeward

kind upon yon way-weird

son.  Apollinaire, with calumet...

the wars is over, anyway

– wars in my old heart.

Ravenna’s where we start

again (light brdftprnt of Dante).

Motif of a sacrifice.

Eternity turned

ice-cold (solid,

absolute).  Not nice –

unless you reckon yet again.

The dogwood mast is creaking

in the slanting afternoon;

winter will be coming soon

for Hen, who gathers everyone

into his earthy tavern

(like a Grecian urn)

across far distances... (American).

10.23.15

dogwood (& spruce) on Fisher St.

Quantum integral

BLUE MIDWAY

In the drift of autumn distances

leaves sail their own Pacific

toward a blue midway

air-matrix.  Somewhere East

of Henry’s passionate history

(mercurial Möbius strip

or Klein bottle – just flip

one M to W).  Love’s mystery

refracts – deflected by the rage

for mastery, an infant

flummoxed by ambivalent

shrugs... until the splintered stage

is suddenly quiet, spooky as old age.

& so he takes Path P

(which intersects roughly

at X) to make a mirror-image

of her wounded face – the child

she was, and is, always

(beneath time-tears, nail-

scars... Hen’s self-betrayals, chilled

on wheels).  Meanwhile, in soft Atlantic

Delft, deft delvers deal

a double-diamond parallel –

quick Jackie-Joanie seesaw flick

like Leo flipped a Lei by 

Oahu Gal in Galilee.

Sol sighs, it’s only Me.

Love’s integral resolves in sky.

10.22.15

Gazebo at Swan Point Cemetery, Providence

Yu the Great & Alma-joie

SPIDER-PARADIGM

Emperor Yu, beside the Yellow River

noticed a painted turtle’s

dome poke from the yurtling

current... crosshatched with a magic square.

Was struck with wonder – enlightenment.

The order of the world

arrayed, made clear – curled

around one salient shell.  A tent

of meeting at the end of time,

a mote embedded with

encaustic gold... the myth

fleshed out by spider-paradigm –

one woof of mutuality

supernal company

dovetailing tympani

to turtle-immortality.

The character of a place reflects

the character of those

who dwell therein.  Flows

of time illumine the limestone text,

the lambswool poncho, shrouded cave –

where we will meet again

old Roger Gentle-Hand,

bright Guillaume Apple-Mare... Genevieve

Little Tree... dear Juliet Bluejay...

where the matrix wheels

an April love... seals

1200 tribes with alma-joie.

10.21.15

Yu the Great

Sketch (from canoe)

BEE-STING

The rough sketch reaches back

so deep into beforetimes

like those caves of limestone

dolphins, walking... some refraction

in the water-filter flips Time over

into clear half-moonlight,

where Word-is-Psyche

typed into a graveyard clover

prints snowfeet along Minnesota

River, cemetery

ridge of Irish faery-

land (Apollinaire in Georgia).

Hard to explain.  Grace Ravlin

what thou lovest well

this garden, under spell

of summer sun (your Washington

laboratory).  Someone brave

magnanimous & kind

who vaults the epic rind

from orange threadspan (architrave

of salt-blue ice).  An Ocean State

of mind, where ships sail

slowly down to Coral

Sound, abeam some forthright

rabbit lighthouse, trembling.

Forgive me, it is so.

Earth is very slow

a-borning.  Here (one dead bee-sting).

10.19.15

Dance of the Giraffirmation

Periodically, in the course of writing Ravenna Diagram - as with many earlier poems - I fall into a sort of dancing fit.  This results in passages which evince a certain air of enthusiasm, an affinity with poets like Whitman and Vachel Lindsay (Hart Crane, sometimes).  It's not a popular or familiar mode today.  But it seems inevitable, built into my poems - a structural dimension, which emerges (usually near the end or at some pivotal point) in the form of these bubbles or bumps or saliences or Giant Red Spots upon the very evenly-distributed & lattice-like design of the whole.

Anyway, here goes.

SUNDANCE POLE

A poem might commence with this

little hawthorn tree

on Fisher St., fairly

overflowing with deep rose-red berries

like fireworks on the 4th of July

flaring & bursting in free

association – a liberty

of uncommon fiery wheels across midnight

sky – the pale stars in the background

steadfast lights, bespeaking

deep-down goodness (Hopkins,

maybe... Mendelssohn) – the silver sound

of a tender, melancholy trumpet

(memory of mourning dove,

her all-compassing love

that wanders wild, like autumn blade

of maple seed).  The streamlet of speech

emerges from wilderness

of your own soul – manifest

in scar-chronicles of flesh (we beseech

thee, YHWH, forgive our ingrained wrong);

the language snakes its way

along a jagged ray

of peace-pipe lightning (atlatl-prong

of brazen serpent) back to the source

rippling from limestone,

primordial marrow-bone –

a familiar voice, whose gentle force

you recognize from long before.

Comes with a question, like

a music teacher – Mike,

Jenny... will you try this score?

Do you know where you are?  Bright lens

(rose-red, white, blue) surrounds

her limpid lamp – sounds

stir from the keys – the earth sends

radiance from ground-bass depths

(a b-flat flint enchantment

striking flame – tent

flaring firelight toward the Great

Bear’s ring).  It is the sundance pole

that gathers every Morning

                    *

Star to Thanksgiving

from every tribe & people in the whole

wide Universe.  The Commonweal

of Cosmos-Wheel, the breeze

of Manitou through trees

in Lebanon, South Central

L.A. – a whisper through the pines

of Mississippi, Kansas,

California... Memphis

Tennessee... on any railroad lines

through space & time.  Even here

on Fisher Street, in Little

Rhody, her turtleshell

murmurs statutes of liberty (I hear

you, there).  Gray hawthorn branches

merge the black & white

of factional dispute,

pretentious politics – brace avalanches

of fanatics, stem the feuding tide;

her leaf-shades balance vision

with experience, precision

with that draft of lifeline magnitude –

fresh air of gratitude & calm

compassion (openness,

grace, charity).  Less

dogma, more enthusiasm –

where blossoming cities lift from soil

of civil equity,

brave ingenuity –

American can-do, granted to all

who will.  Old promise of a justice

overflowing, paid

in full – the freedom-chord,

rung with a joyful crash-caprice

of fife & drum, guitar & harp –

O let it roll down now!

That red berry you sow

in morning will be blooming bright C-sharp

by noon!  Song’s equilibrium

rests on her branch –

Love will enfranchise

multitudes (world freedom plumb).

10.16.15

Hawthorn on Fisher St.

Ides of October

LIPS MONASTERY

This bright transparency of mid-

October Providence –

sweet-sad remembrance

of the princely sun (Caesar’s eyelid,

drooping into Ides).  Boethius,

last of the Romans, slips

away into Sophia-deeps,

drowses beneath dogwood leaves;

little feathery flesh-tone coins

of wild oats dangle, sway

on pale green stalks today.

She’ll plant them with Galla’s remains,

he mutters to himself.  The monarch’s

just a social butterfly;

none need any longer die

in her doctrine.  Light-waves, arcs

of arches, radiating from

a central hearth... archaic

woodland (near Itasca)

where the springing pendulum

of springs is born.  Moss-green Alph

to mauve Omega, vibrant

strings (O most ancient

of lays!) knot Ocarina Everysylph

into her vale of Inca-tiers –

a tinder Lips Monastery,

quicksilver Philosophy

lifts Rome to Mexican cedars.

10.15.15

tame wild oats

Through human sleep

Christopher Columbus is a divisive historical figure.  The Columbus Day holiday brings out clashing perspectives.  I'm aware of his mixed legacy : symbol of exploration, expanding human horizons, a round globe - and also an image of Western imperialism, cultural hegemony, genocide.  I know today's entry in the Ravenna Diagram series will come across (to most, perhaps) as culturally & stylistically obsolete.  But a poet has a right to be out-of-touch & ridiculous, occasionally.  Sometimes we have to follow the poem's lead.  Now & then a poem unfolds in a metamorphosis, transfigurement.  Symbols molt into something new.  I don't know if that's happened here, though; it's just another Henry sketch.

TREASURE CHEST

A bird hums low through human sleep,

hums softly lullaby,

aubade.  Ohio

bifocals their Burchfields reap.

Columbus is a Jonah still.

The outcast Genoese

casts off, a shifty breeze

of shuttered Inquisition swells

bright spinnaker for Spanish Main.

Indies glimmer in the grain;

Powhatan’s skipping maid

knots scalp & quipu in one braid –

taps down lost gold of tumbleweed

& prairie memory

to one wide planetary

estuary (harvest mead).

The bird floats feathered in her gypsy

treasure chest.  The ship

is Holigost – Time’s keep

(unfathomed yet).  Each Henry V,

grandee Philip will drop the knee

her way; each hungry soul

will stand renewed & whole

upon New Land someday (you’ll see).

Thus in the globe of Jonah’s word

the world comes round, & so

one wing’s carefree proportion

curls each creaking mast homeward.

10.13.15

Statue of Columbus (Elmwood Avenue, Providence)

October through a giant copper beech

The day approacheth, just a few weeks from now - I must be leaving ye old Providence, heading west to Minneapolis.  Walking around this windy overcast morning - gray skies, gray hair, gray world - thinking of the bark on a great gray beech tree, & the gray stone of churchyards, & the grey-eyed wisdom of Athena-Sophia (you might say)... all these sempiternal things (you might say)... & of Jasper Johns' gray series, & of the strange old gray painter crouched in a gray streetcorner, in Antonioni's Ravenna film, Deserto Rosso (was it Dante?)... & so all these grays blended on this gray day, as I remembered Edwin Honig, who had so much to do with my poetry life here in Providence... & Edwin's terrific short poem "November through a Giant Copper Beech" (you can find it in at least one of the editions of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry).

Edwin's poem is about passing things, & things that are steadfast through time...

I got into a college (Brown) on the strength of some high school poems.  & stuck around here, writing on & off, for 45 years.  I just learned a few days ago that a poem of mine has been accepted for publication in that venerable American institution, Poetry magazine.  So maybe something at least has come of it all - so many wayward years in Roger's city-state, his "refuge for troubled conscience"!

PUMPKIN MAN

                                   in memory E.H.

This windy gray October day,

fat robin camouflaged

(hoodie?) in dogwood’s

rusty green... & then the great gray

beech I passed this morning (Slater

& Lincoln).  Elephantine,

primordial, in motion

still (old pre-Socratic critter)...

Edwin’s tree, his 100-branching

crown – the graying King

of Gray, still whistling

to Even Dove, down never-dying

Dolphin Way (led by leaping sparks

into Ravenna).  O patient

rude dream-sponge – intent

to wrestle safety shroud across stark

span! – your International Pumpkin Man

lit from within (warm

orange flame)... No harm

shall come to thee, my child – listen!

In a corner of a lumber yard

one sharp-eyed old saint

(framed by gray paint

cans, wagon) waves palm upward

toward the dark sheep-door, just

over his shoulder – where

one candle shivers fire.

An endless jet, he whispers.  Trust.

10.9.15

Beech tree on Slater Ave., Providence

Bronze Age harpoon

SNOW-CONFESSIONAL

These scarlet dogwood berries

sprinkling the patio

like drops of blood, O

thou October pale marine.  Seas

mottle thy face more than they should –

scars, age-spots, drawn

across youth long gone.  Her

billows drowned there, Robin Hood.

So the copper-pronged harpoon

dove deep, to sea-floor known

before Bronze Age.  Ravens

intone their learnèd funeral tune

& crows can recognize your face, 

Cautantowwit.  The moon

be pierced to russet soon;

your soul, also, cannot erase

persistent chronic blood-pain’s trace

that stains each chronicle

of hero-miracle,

mutters Antigone (in Mary’s place).

A coral circlet rings her hair –

aquamarine, full fathom

five; another kingdom

circumscribes (asper coin-lair).

You know it, Henry Buried-Man;

your snow-confessional

remorse codes – Rez is all.

Be reconciled, sez Rabbi Dan.

10.7.15

dogwood in October sun

Limestone Medusa

DOUBLE-WE

Something inherent in the stone,

the milky, the snow-seasoned

Winnebago (Indian mound).

A pregnant plot, expectant zone...

one-stringèd salt-shanty, or tent

of tentative meeting.

Limestone Mediterranean

USA, moon-galloping... unspent

Ethiopian Edith (double-we).

String’s stretch-to-break

(real Rimini headache)

loops through Persephone-tragedy –

Tiresias whispering mother-wit

or pock-marked moon

keening her Dionysus-loon

(rive-marine beyond yon Key West

jetty).  If the Greeks could see...

but it’s not necessary.

Stout military

Perseus will refract the sea

into a trillion dolphin-heaps;

Poseidon’s jealousy

toss Cassiopeia

upside to her throne (for keeps).

The circle of the sea (deep Circe)

revolves round Galilee –

Pygmalion will be

revived in thee, Pocahontas-B. 

10.6.15

may the circle be unbroken

Your Persian paradise

LOST PHOTO

Spotty grackles swarm the dogwood,

chatty starlings nibbling

scarlet berries, quibbling

around each drooping leaf (old

ruddy father).  They traipse a happy

nonsense o’er the remnant

garden.  Sir Thomas Browne,

strum softly til I end my Rhody

nap (it won’t be long).  Your Persian

paradise (precisely drawn)

will do for Gödel, Dante –

not so simple to sketch that Abyssinian

abyss, encircling the human plow

through history.  Your soul

is touched by lost photo

whose courteous artist limns her now –

an April child glimpsed through November

shades (All Souls, Grandpa).

One unicorn grace, selah.

O woe to me, that scarred the moon (her

face still gleams from autumn grass).

A soft Franciscan Rimini

rhymes in the memory

of your basilica (on ne passe pas).

Dear evening Matilda, 1-3-2...

(Beethoven, fowled & quartered –

decussation – weathered

sprite).  All shall be well, hums Manitou.

10.5.15

laundry line, old lilac, light Brownian diamond

Rhody backyard I must leave ere long

The one who got away

TRAIN-HORNS

The raven-message in the ink gets blurred

in the dark.  Signal fades

over badlands.  Wade’s

gone upstream, Charlie – overheard

her talking about the telephone.

One with the wheel-dial

we used to use.  I’ll

call you in three days, Persephone.

Grace made this little linen hanging

with palm greenery, with

red specks for eyes.  So Phoebe

set to compass-pointing in a painting –

hand-prints, fingerprints, green

dolphins breaching in

a fling... theremin

flute-song – ghost dance for Iowa

maiden (midden remains).  400 years

in Utah, seems like,

they danced.  A snake

coppered up in a trance – cheers

for the livid buffalo (the one

who got away)!  I

don’t know, Charlie –

she’s pretty mad.  The whole corn

crop is blown to smithereens.

Hazel threw her whistle

in the purple thistle –

thorns crown hills.  Train-horns...

10.2.15 

Grassroots gun control : thoughts of a bystander

Yet another mass shooting on a school campus (Oregon).

I'd like share a few thoughts - though I'm not well-informed on the issue.

First : here we have another tragedy, yet more victims of our own political impasse.  We can't seem to get beyond the gridlock brought on by the NRA and its ideology - that is, the notion of Americans' inalienable right to own guns, and the idea that this right is under threat from liberals, police and politicians.

Second : listening to the traumatized public response by local leadership in the wake of the outrage, I kept hearing this message - "We don't even want to talk about the perpetrator.  His name shall not be mentioned."  I think I understand the emotional and practical motives behind this position : first, we want to cast out the agent of this suffering - we want to exile him from the community he has harmed.  Second, we don't want to give any media publicity to the deranged persons who engage in such deeds : their pathological narcissism & hunger for publicity is often a feature of these crimes.

Third : these two aspects underline the fact that what we have is both a political impasse and a community trauma.  Perhaps we need a new approach, a sort of end-run around the NRA.

I haven't done enough research even to say whether or not this is a new idea - probably not.  But here's the concept :

Maybe we need a grassroots, locally-based initiative to deal with the weapons in our communities.  Not a project focused on political initiatives, legislation, or regulation - that's already happening -  but rather a community-driven effort, which makes use of recent advances in data-collection and social networking.

I'm not suggesting any let-up on the anti-NRA, pro-gun-control political work.  I support that movement wholeheartedly.  This would be a complementary effort.

Neighborhoods and communities would take ownership of the problem.  They would do so by conducting a voluntary inventory/public awareness campaign.  Each neighborhood, each community, each town would take responsibility for its own weapons oversight - and would share their information with each other, and with local law enforcement.

The idea would be to take an inventory - street by street, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, town by town, region by region.  It would be done by local volunteers.  The questions on the survey would be as simple and direct as possible :

1.  Are their guns in your home?
2.  How many such weapons?
3.  Who owns and takes responsibility for them?
4.  What is your reason for owning a weapon?  What is its use?
5.  What can we do to help prevent gun violence?

It would be essential to undertake this on a grassroots basis : that is, not simply in cyberspace, on some social-media platform.  These of course would also be essential tools - but there would have to be an actual, human, local resource or center of operations.  Each neighborhood would need to be aware of the project and take responsibility for it (in collaboration with others).

Initially I imagined the survey would also try to discover if there was evidence - criminal, behavioral, etc. - that the presence of guns in a particular home might be an immediate threat to the community.  But there are reasons why this part would probably be inadvisable and unworkable.

Nevertheless, I do think one facet of the problem lies not with the weapons, but with the people who obtain them.  The NRA uses this argument in their propaganda - but there's a reason they do.  Addressing the psychological, behavioral, and social pathologies which lead people to commit such crimes seems absolutely necessary.

I realize there are law-enforcement and social-service programs already in effect, which try to deal with this dimension.  But possibly something equally local and community-based could be attempted in tandem with a neighborhood weapons inventory.

How do we undertake preventive measures - how do we work with people consumed by rage, irrationality, hatred?  How do we prevent them from acting on their violent delusions?  How do we address their problems?  I don't have the answers.  But the inevitable (and understandable) ostracism, judgement, and expulsion of perpetrators - after crimes are committed - seems insufficient.

Are there innovative means by which local communities could forestall such tragedies, without infringing at all on anyone's rights or liberties?  Can we take action - on a neighborhood basis - to confront the problem directly?  Rather than standing by, passively, while the lugubrious, gridlocked political debate grinds on & on?

Atlantic weather

HOME FREE

Set adrift down Providence streets,

blown along by chilly air,

this autumn Atlantic weather

in the Ocean State... gray cloud-fleets

follow birthday Hobo, his big-baby

muttering – a nonsense

tremolo from Jonah’s

whale-gut habitat (her kingdom’s maybe

someday).  Like Apollinaire slaloming

dolphin-rime atop a marble

door in Rimini, warbling

his trompette marine (something

about a Frisco treasure chest

in a hurricane eye) – or

Bluejay Slocum, Shaker

salt in pauper’s Dauphin-quest...

your sailor’s air, so fortunate

pipes down from the future

on Ariadne lure.

Hookline for deep sinker – bright

hand who flew from the poop deck

waving from waves his

palm-leaf radius

(JJ-pendant, octahedral speck).

Wisdom’s justified in all her children

plays out the line from high-

strung Miriam.  Sky milk-

train sounds – all home free then.

10.1.15

October periscope