Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

HIGH SOPHIA

My mother’s golden watercolor

of a corner by the porch

door – let us approach

this summer morning autumn splendor

as it was, & will be once again.

An open door in Hopkins

Minnesota spins

its Manitou of teeming pain

et vin (an infinite childhood);

Alighieri in Ravenna

summons high Sophia

in the guise of Beatrice... would

she still circumference all human

knowledge in her arms?

Beyond Hell’s harms

stands Boethius – Consolation

rhymes (decline & fall of Rome)

with Dante’s futurismo

(Roma onde Cristo

è Romano) – one bright sunlit home.

Paisans, turkeys, sheep draw near.

The meal c’est commencé.

Massasoit & Williams here play

host – what was a funeral pyre

unfolds to cornucopia.

The crux of natural law

is liberty’s Commedia –

all-human Earth joins Milky Way.

11.25.15

Thanksgiving at 509

Tomorrow some of the local Gould gang will be gathering at "509", my mother's apt in St. Paul (with the same street number as their old house back in Mendelssohn - 509 Arthur).  It will be the first Thanksgiving in 65 years that she'll be on her own, without my father.  Mary Ravlin Gould, the very talented not-famous painter, potter & general craft master, will be 88 next month.

About 25 yrs ago I wrote a long poem called "Grain Elevator", sort of a take-off on the "dream-vision" (this one featuring Ronald Reagan, Walt Whitman, my grandfather Ravlin - the grain elevator builder - & various infernal images including trains, pyramids and golden nuggets of dust).  Anyway, the poem ends with this rather stylized Norman-Rockwell Americana coda, an old-fashioned Thanksgiving thanksgiving poem dedicated to MRG.

III

Your two clay whistle-birds
Are on the windowsill,
Ready for children's lips to share
Their flute-sounds with the real birds
At the feeder, on the other side of the glass;

You've always been the better maker,
Turning the years and years around
With muscular feet and fingers,
Clay speech rising from the wheel
To last this generation, and to serve
The next Thanksgiving – plates, bowls,
Pitchers waiting to ornament
Some simpler, lasting celebration,
Open house for the upright heirs
Of tender hills and anxious clay.

And where's that modest watercolor,
Lit with the cold and clear Minnesota light,
Of Granddad's granary downtown? Standing
Behind the rusted parallel of the tracks
And a row of poplars, crowded out
By warehouses and condominiums,
Its curving columns burgeoning now
Only with air and memory – and hidden
Wafers of petrified wheat, noon
Sunlight answering a lifetime's work
Just over the treeline and the crooked streets.

On a sultry day in late July
In 1961 – when I was nine – we stopped
In a little pasture beside the road,
Under the shade of clustered oaks,
With a herd of cows nearby,
For a picnic and a rest on our way
To visit Grandma's farm, and cousins
In Iowa City. And after the sandwiches
And sleepy talk, while the grown-ups
Snoozed among rocks and baskets,
I wandered off a little way
And found a squared-off family graveyard,
The gray slate leaning in the uncut grass,
Deep summer whispering from unfamiliar soil.

Maybe it was your voice I heard,
So long ago there in the aching depths;
Your voice, challenging me to find
That earthy crossroads – whistling word –
And lay Grandfather's brooding ghost to rest.

Still life with JFK

PAPER SAILBOAT

His profile in shining lunar silver

twinkles with Dublin glee

on the half-dollar (JFK,

insouciant).  Camelot forever.

I was born in ’52, believe

it or not, but only

52 years ago I

lost my innocence (heave

sigh).  I was 11 years old

when they shattered the crown

of the redhead king.  My own.

A double birthday, dubbed.  Fold

up the deck of your paper sailboat, son;

in Newport they will mourn

the people’s chosen one,

killed by the backlash of the gun.

A still life, now.  Brown Decades

(Peto).  Reminiscences

of Lincoln.  Whitman’s

chrysanthemum (cresting cascades

of lilacs).  Memphis underworld –

I gather the limbs of Osiris

(52-pickup, Rimini-Venice).

First king, dead king.  Neighborhood

gossip has it, Solomon,

he’s coming back.  He

never died.  Like Jonah

Houdini, he’ll eat fish in Hebron

yet again.

11.22.15

Mississippi sundown

INCA BIRD

Mississippi sundown.  Meek

flock of cottonwoods

leans toward sand-

bank... listen to the river speak.

Noah’s raven criss-crossed the ocean

weaving black on blue, 

salt over salt (sez you).

My splotchy gouache representation

wings away north, south... follows

Big Muddy to her delta

denouement, selah.

Breathes on clay (rows, rose).

This Inca bird, like a Cuzco condor

(or Marshall St. bridge

bald eagle)... no prison-

pigeon, but flight to the rondure –

a well of black water, with stars

in a lattice (for stories).

The Ghost, says Maximus,

prehends the insolence of wars –

lift up your hearts, she cries,

lift up.  Paradise

is a habit of eyes &

hands, not formulae;

lips rim a coracle (of cedar

curve & silver plow)

so that you too may know,

my child – the Earth (from a star).

11.21.15

Balancing books on Tin-Top Hill

COFFIN-CUSP

Here in the cozy habitat

of Cecil St. – Chester-

cat, snug in his nest

(or hut) near the Witch’s Hat

on Tower Hill (old Clifton

Fadiman abode) – Le Roi

est mort, Vive le Roi

brazen carillons cry (Berryman

fleet flute-plot) – I’m remembering

Rhode Island.  Ocean State.

Providence, full spate –

tight-furled concert, in a spring

of industrial silver (Jewelry

Capital of the World).

Hazelnut head, all pearled

with raven breakers... like the sea

my gong-struck muse (Medusa chord).

Apollinaire will bear

the burden of the air

leaning against brick wall... absurd

farewell to fiery squid (trompette

marine).  Buried in roses,

granite Roger poses

on Tin-Top Terrace – a light

unto both Gentile & Jew (washed-up

driftwood apple tree

in prow of paddle-me);

balances books on his coffin-cusp.

11.20.15

Cottonwoods on River Road

A poet builds a house with words.  Underneath the words, the wind blows.  Time moves on, change happens.  It's out of control, seemingly.

Or is it?  The house is built on sand, or stone.  Maybe limestone, which is a record of shifting time.

Back in the 1920s, my Grandpa Ravlin built a sturdy brick house at 1615 River Road, in Minneapolis - around the corner from where I am now living, after about 45 years in Rhode Island.

In 1615, John Donne became an Anglican minister and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral (pretty much against his will - he was commanded thus by King James I).

A poem has its own architecture, if you live in it for a while you begin to sense the contours with your fingertips.  The first Book of Ravenna Diagram concluded, fittingly, just as I was leaving Rhode Island.  Tonight - maybe - I'm starting up again.  The impulse is relentless, like the Big Muddy ink-wash across the street.  It feels good to be at it again, anyway.

Moving is painful, as thousands of Syrian refugees can tell you (better than I can).

The state of Rhode Island was established (under the leadership of Roger Williams) as a "refuge for troubled consciences".

Let them in, America (Statue of Liberty speaking).

MAMMOTH SNAKE

By the River Road, under the tall

bare cottonwoods, on the last

warm day, before the blast

of ice descends from the North Pole

I think of this Mississippi

constancy (unbending

loops & bends, winding

serpent-wise out of prehistory)

& of my frailty, my brevity

having forsook soft sand-

castle petite Rhode Island

for some territorial interiority –

inward cthonic Mendelssohn

where Mirror Lakes echo

down Arthur Street (so

far-off in the way-back zone).

The cottonwoods lean toward the sun.

Gravity pulls at

the Franklin Bridge (that

spider-thread my brother swan-

dived off, & lived).  Flatland anguish

drags at Minneapolis –

down gridiron avenues

of gray snow, hunkered refugees...

The low sun, like a paradigm

hovers just over the mammoth

snake.  The face in the cloth

shudders – furls birchbark (trireme).

11.19.15