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)