Add it to the quaint & curious volume

SPECTRA BEE

The spectre of a raven, carved

in ink above the dusty

door, the door to an abyss

beyond the evening river

Nile.  Rehearsing my remorse

once more... so toss

Einstein to 529 (Lorenz

aggression-transform) – on course

toward decreation (Eddington eddies

echo in papyrus

reeds).  He’s US

(a relative, at least) – voice-

breeze through checkerboard fabric.

& Raven, O... her shadow

dove into my gray

memorious blender-alembic –

clouds of milk or milk of clouds

from whence the winking

spectra bee.  Keening

I owe... I owe... Iona sods

& Iowa rows (dappled Columbia).

A stone in the corner of

RI... reunion-trove

fallen from sky.  Cornucopia

plumb with casket (evergreen);

plum turtledove

binding with love

clay child & jealous heaven.

1.29.16

Shakespeare's acorn

MICRO-MOSAIC

This circle of 7 emerald palms

(with 8 red dots across

lifelines) was pressed

by hand – an infant hand, Phoebe’s –

under the guiding eye of Grace

(in Providence).  Now

I set my cup (micro-

mosaic from Byzantium) in place

atop these marble squares, that trace

brass compass & sundial

of Roger Williams.  Trial

by English fire (Coke’s carapace) 

was his – to bring the Narragansett

word for liberty

to London (& to me).

The sovereignty of good, in its

vernacular incarnation, is

one global, crystalline,

turtleshell acorn –

Shakespearean lap of happiness

(skullcap, human Golgotha-dome

worn meekly in Ferrara

& Venice – Ravenna,

Providence...) – What cheer?  Welcome,

warbles Canonicus, chief

Shaker under raven-

falls (Columbian) –

his handshake stronger than belief.

1.27.16

Big Rabbit & the Can-Canute

TOTEM-GHOST

Winter.  An imperturbable water-serpent

flows smoothly south, under

the presiding MN-arch

(Peace Bridge).  Cloud-blanket (quiet, lambent

silverthought).  Ice-glancing light

of North Star State –

each ray will penetrate

the sixpack hexagons of Snow Rabbit

– that giant Bigfoot totem-ghost

Sophie & Phoebe rolled

to quasi-life (backyard).

Some Hiawatha Teotihuacan (host-

figure, phantom King).  Messiah

is a butterfly.  Love,

Love, and be loved, beloved

Bumblebee – amen, selah.

This glossy lala glossolalia

is like a peacock’s choral

cry, or agate-spiral

Saverin-Canute, out of Iona

(green Columba’s jaybird hymn).

At the spare crossrood

of naked servitude –

Boethius, Maximus, beaten

senseless – there Polaris burns,

& melts into the heart

of summer Ocean.  Start

your laddie-dance, lass – Roy returns.

1.26.16

The old poet is a tramp

FARM ROADS

                               The old poet is a tramp. 

Something there is in me that loves

this heavy railroad bridge.

Like an Osiris-ridge

of rust the gyrfalcon oar-hovers

in the antique poem by the worn-out

Beat (Muskeg Al, or Jerry

Don Teo).  So very

wistful, warbling his old trompette

marine beside the drowsy Miss...

You have to be a hobo

just a little, Jo

to know.  How mutterland is bliss.

She reaches timely tendrils now

deep through backwaters

of still memory.  Neighbors,

children... chicory, mosquitoes... O.

Evening stretching infinite

farm roads toward sunset.

& you, caught in a net

of yearning (fluttery disquiet).

She’s your Dream, old trampoline.

& I would have you meet

my own familiar fleet

amigo – invisible yet, still gone;

warm shadow, like a humming bird

who beams from evening sky.

Love is perfection (sigh).

A misty rainbow, Hobo said.

1.25.16

Chess problem

REED MAT

Husks of cicadas, limestone shells.

These layers, a palimpsest

of leopard skins (East/

West).  Serpentine spells

(Alph to Yezidi).  In graven

hieroglyphs of human

dream – Solomon

& Shulamith (Ferrarese garden

bond).  A Mendelssohn mandala-

afterlife, of local

equilibria... after all

the Pharaohs have their sway (selah).

Battle of shade & pictograph

resolved by wind.  Cool

breeze, troubling pool

of sunken barge (regal riff-raff).

Vernacular archaic culture

architecture – simple

transmission of ample

gratitude for being.  Pressure

on the king (of everything).

Grey humming bird

omen signals absurd

sacrifice (pawn for nothing)...

his baby steps (Gypsy to Jew)

toward one wooden

nature morte (amen,

amen).  Reed mat, sheik.  Me & you.

1.23.16

In a Scattergood world

PURE SOUND

                              i.m. Robert Treuer

Back East, in Rhode Island, the big snow

coming.  Thinking of William

Blackstone, hermit-pilgrim – the

one who went to live with Miantonomi

& the other red-men.  To the House

of 4 Pines – under

cartouche of Little Bear,

North Star.  Out of Nazi Austria

sped a peregrine, by grace of God

& pity of strange braves

(Scattergood saviors,

anonymous donors... meek just good).

To a tree farm he fostered (in remote

forest).  Led into circle

of silent First People,

tending ashes (sitting shiva).  Little

prow of acacia, rocking near Itasca-

Nile... your upside-down

fire-drill will drown its

candle in stony Minnehaha.

Sigh, winging out into grey sound

(b-flat at midnight).

The musicologist

from Florence mutters back to ground

just so – back to the pigeon-clay

of primordial, steadfast

Bee (until the last

dragon of Sheol fades away).

1.22.16

The Hiawatha

SMOKE-SIGNUM

I carry Sophie through the snow

to the summit of Tower Hill.

She says, It’s magical

(prodigal 2-yr-old). & so

it is.  That conical moss-green

Witch’s Hat crowns

a Yeatsian limestone

keep (prehistoric submarine

barnacled with biomorphic

hieroglyphs).  Isis

the octopus gathers

her segmented sea-worm (limbic

bronze phosphorus monarch child)

in streams of time – before

the 9th planet was born,

or knowledge-tree known (wild

afterthought of smoke-signum).

Chicago Hiawatha

arrowed here, truer

than rue – trained consummation,

like soft carnation in Quaker lapel

(hexagonamatrix).  Rule,

Scattergood Friends School –

your West Branch harbor (charitable

agape) a hostel in a hostile time.

Justice for orphan, widow,

refugee.  Praise be, grey

catenary icon (9-twined lime).

1.20.16

Tower Hill (Prospect Park, Minneapolis)

Celestial canoe

Today, most curiously, is the birthday both of Edgar Allan Poe, and of his literary soulmate & would-be bride, Helen Whitman.  I've written a lot of local-historical poetry about them, & other local Providence things, which you can find here (best to start at the beginning).  

Edgar Poe was fading fast in the late 1840s.  Yet he had hopeful & grandiose dreams - of marrying Helen, of starting a new literary journal, of instigating an American cultural Renaissance.  It all came to nought... or not.  Poe, in characteristic ghoulish (Baudelairean) fashion, achieved his aims - after a century or so.  His Providential ghost-bride (Whitman) came at it from another angle... yet they reached the same goal.  (Walt was the only literary figure of note to attend Poe's lonely funeral.)

Early tomorrow morning, a rare alignment of planets will be visible on the North American east coast.  (Search below for confirmation.)

LILAC BARGE

In the Rock, the library, in Providence.

Snow’s hexagon glissando

falls on Whitman-Poe

birthday.  Athenaeum lens

(blind flash of mercury & lead)

poses twin agate lamps –

of seahorse hippocamps

& dread.  Envisioning (not-dead).

Dust-labyrinth of pupa-pharaoh.

Curious mummy-volumes

Oedipus exhumes...

– Eureka!  I have found you,

Madeleine!  In mold of lichen

Venn diagram (Raven) –

Martian crossroad, Jovian

Juliet-canoe... (shade of Ferrara sun).

Saturnine Henry disappears

under the alignment

of these stars’ bent

light palladium coheres

& spheres revolve (toward Galilee).

Into Newport Holy-Land

sail Jack & Jackie... Helen

Whitman... Eddie Poe.  One shy

brown bird, conducting lilac barge

beneath cedar boughs;

bearing between twin prows

her dewy double-ewed grail-charge.

1.19.16

Providence Athenaeum

MLK in memory

Time only grows on you.  48 years ago this April, a gray, rainy Saturday, my dear friend Tom Fleming & I joined a long memorial/protest walk for Martin Luther King, pacing slowly through Minneapolis.  I remember circling Lake Calhoun (Calhoun...) - everyone in a somber mood, but walking & talking together - a public ceremony, an opportunity to meet others, neighbors, fellow citizens.  

20 years later, Tom would be gone, a victim of the AIDS epidemic.  But we were there that day.

Have been reading Iris Murdoch's little book of philosophy, The Sovereignty of Good.  Of course, MLK was a sort of sovereign of goodness.  A great witness to Murdoch's fundamental idea - that the Good is a substantial, unified-if-various Something : a spiritual entity known deep within ordinary people of all backgrounds.  A shared thing, a public thing, a common good, a universal benchmark - the one goal of human striving (out of our own weakness, wrongness & disgrace).  The thing we hope for, a something hopeful.  This is one dimension - a philosophical aspect, you might say - of the spiritual testament & legacy of Martin Luther King.  A hopeful call for justice, & shared happiness : the equal dignity of all human being, under the wings of infinite blessing & grace.

PEASANT DANCE

                                    i.m.MLK

Only an unpretentious oil

beside the door, my mother

painted, 50 years

ago.  Backyard.  Spring soul

of morning, golden-green – the glow

dappled with jet-black

flock of starlings, yakking &

feeding there (framed by two

young oaks, & the backs of houses).

Bring your gift, starling,

to the altar of everything –

Ocean River, inexaustible goodness.

O parallactic mercy of

these diamond facets!  Water-

falls of liberty – your

moral law, Dove-

cote!  Who moves through Memphis stone

like mild summer breeze

or shady swing-trapeze,

to milky matrix of the human

sun.  Love’s stern ethos is

a camouflage – justice

for joy – ray, source...

O King of Arthur St., she sees

you!  One glance of moist radiance

out of the Black Sea book

of Always... there, look!

Her garden summons (Peasant Dance).

1.18.16 

Backyard, Arthur St., early 1960s (by Mary Gould)

Old man Boethius

DAWN STREET

In the ash-gray sky, where the ravens drift

in the Bruegel scene, over winter

panorama – harbor

& skating rink, riddle & gift...

In remote perspective, the raven’s eye

reaps furtive memory,

most ancient flame.  We

walked together, you & I

down the dawn street, in spousal light;

only a pigeon-murmur

echoed our passage there.

The hearth’s full of embers (life is night).

Old man Boethius steps out

his syllables, each

vowel like a cherished

peach.  This radiance will cast

doubt into shade (beneath pine branches

where salted gratitude

savors his fortitude).

Beatrice-Columbia suddenly launches

into sweet aria of praise

when Jonah surfaces

from dove-grey eyes

of everlastingness   Apollinaire’s

fumes   filter into laughter

War to End All Wars

a cloverleaf surprise

renders mercy on earth   hereafter

1.17.16

Henry's Sheba (down south)

RORSCHACH FIGURE

This gaunt, towering, aged pine,

adorned with a scattering

of obsolete Christmas

lights, draws a straight sober line

lifting its crow’s nest to point

of perihelion (invisible sun

behind galactic one).

My ghost-ship creaks with accent

grave along her seventh wave

(sky-reckoning) – southern

constellation, borne

on Magellanic surf.  An octave

mutely unfolds – an origami

Chinese lantern, spun

outward (on tiny silken

struts) into a diamond Chi-

Rho maze – Rorschach figure

of raven, or monarch

brain (Venn-Neva wreck)...

my spider-path, or Chartres lure.

Eurydice of Dream Song,

Henry’s Sheba down south.

Proceeds by word of mouth –

transfigures saturnine keening

to hopeful whistle.  Chickadee,

junco?  Woodpecker –

rousing Ravenna nature

morte (ligneous crucifix-aubade).

1.15.16

Ashraf Fayadh : #FreeAshraf

Cirque Planetaire

UPSTART HILLS

Gray coal cars thunder monotonously

across an old iron bridge.

Only a local image

in midwestern bleak.  Your poem will be

allegorical, of necessity

since an Earth so various

is only one of a series

on parade (sparkling panoply

du Cirque Planetaire).  Italian sun

is as a brazen shield

above scarred poppy field;

the moon a candle in Pavian dungeon...

Poema Sacra, Dante’s testament

è tutto didascalico –

a climber’s manual (to go

from shady gloom to cheerful summit

of Rose Mountain splendor).  My sun

rides low in winter sky,

chanting How Not to Die

in plain & soulful Minnesotan

(Ojibwa).  The dream of history

breaks open at its heart.

All-human upstart

hills (Superior, or Tuscany)

fill nets of silver phosphor –

your soul’s a philosopher

in love with twin Mirror

Lakes (Justitia, Amor).

1.13.16

The Sovereignty of Good

PRAIRIE SPACE

A beautiful moon swings low over

frigid freeway, tonight.

Distant rays (twice-refracted)

illuminate roadside snow.  Up there

floating, one sharp sigh, one smile –

dark rondure of tennis ball

cushions his gradual

descent (unique lunar profile).

Substance of illumination...

State of Union, tonight.

President sheds late

bright emanation (station

on the way).  Recognition

of a mission, Everyman –

Goodness is this, right?  One.

Gaze upon prairie space (the sun).

Pursuit of happiness.  By we

the people.  Recognition

of a transposition...

humble oxymoron-man (of thee

I sing).  He play the target-sign,

a threefold ground zero

premier.  Mysterioso.

Ford Theatre (Dallas denouement).

Roger Williams tracks into the woods

to huts of Miantonomi.

Is finished, sez he –

snowing again (beatitudes).

1.12.16

Crossing the Rubicon, again...

ONE SPRING

The river across the street still flows

under thickening ice, ceaseless.

Its lesser tributaries

(Minnesota, Minnehaha) also

persist – all of them subsiding

into Ocean River

finally (only a quiver

rippling Time).  Julius is sliding

a handkerchief across his brow

in 49 B.C.

The die is cast, sez he.

Yokels on Rubicon blow

tubas now – let War decide.

World empire in his grip,

peace is ordained.  Slip

the noose over each parricide

(Brutus, Absalom); the father’s

kingdom will be certified,

et ratified, in blood.

Shadow of a kingfisher

rotating in graffiti’d alcove.

Boethius & father

(Symmachus) share

fort et dur... Ravenna love-

keen (after bronze millennium).

Time’s universal –

history’s rehearsal

for a mangy star-profundum

                 *

deeper in the soul o’man

than Solomon arrayed

or Emperor betrayed.

An agate, tossed in Jordan

sand.  Halcyon day (of almond

shade, & waterfall).

Life’s good, is all –

big benison de tout l’monde.

Reaches through the harvest of

your Martian scythe, O

Death, to something more –

the milky Rio of the Blest.

It is Beyond.  It’s over yonder.

Everywoman’s Eridanos,

Poe’s Eureka.  Moses

glimpsed it in his heart’s far

island (yours, mine) – soul

liberty’s Belle Isle –

Eternity (only

a smile from here).  Glows, whole.

There were 4 rivers flowing

out of Eden, toward

House of 4 Pines (word

lost on the wind).  All knowing

& loving, all doing & being

gathered in a khipu

knot... arc of yew

over limestone grave (one spring).

1.11.16

Minnehaha Falls

O ye porcelain princes

DOVE’S EYE

Arctic air is bearing down now

on this middling Midwestern

flatland plate (limestone).

No sea-breeze moderates the snow

though I remember dockyards of Duluth

in water colors.  Seagulls

recollect their coast

with scraping cries.  Boaz & Ruth

wend for us all – we ramble through

strange parts, returning home;

Kuala Lumpur’s steam-

bath sealed a wedding (one from two).

Love knits together contraries.

This is old wisdom, Sophie;

providential strophe

swung from your native city.  Rhody’s

ambient orchestra – a certain

mildness in the air,

a temperate clarity...

O ye proud porcelain princes, hearken!

Loveless disdain for one another

serves not to patch up

my cracked American cup.

You bicker with your own twin brother.

Stiff little Nutcracker king, your white

hair flows like rain from grey

dove’s eye.  Pluperfect Roy...

a rose ellipse (enfolding day & night).

1.8.16 

Drowsy motion of the river R

FRESH CRUST

The immense raincloud stretched like serpent

or shadow of raven-

wing, on an evening horizon

over the Pacific, just past the unspent

abyss of Golden Gate.  Only here

ice scales an ever-brooding

Mississippi – black Earth blood-

stream (like Nile in winter mirror).

My Neva-Neva land folds history

into an origami crane –

an ever-moving terrapin

lapping on a chain (of clay).

A flower clambers from those rings –

a million-pillowed peacock

Rose, whose eyes flock

van der Weyden faces (channelings

of worm-warp smiles).  Lyre-kings

hung like Christmas bulbs

from every thorn; their clubs

thronged in night circles, chorusing;

the Word was crumbling, in a whirlpool

(Ocean River, circulating

echoing Hector ring)...

‘til Joey the Calabrian (my cool

collaborator) sketched an eagle

plummeting – flipped

up a fresh crust, dipped

in wine & snow – lifted his bugle...

1.7.16

Complex of the six directions

MANGER-HAVEN

Everywhere a vector-vortex,

a 3-dimensional crane-

liftoff.  A diagonal plane

of tracer-tracks – trains, trucks,

jet-like chariots surround this

Shriners’ hideaway, where

limping children play.

Mute manger-haven, beneath curious

folksy lunar scimitar 

insignia. Granddad’s

old Buick neighborhood.

Born on Epiphany, you are

a kindly prehistoric whisper-

star, remote but bright.

Hum beneath black-white

acrid mercury bath – Big Dipper

trench-canoe.  Grave air-casket

you portage over your head,

smiling beyond dread

fumes of one Martian marble planet...

So every local khipu-knot’s

a complex of the six

directions – Shakespeare’s

skullcap, Pushkin’s troika-stop –

your eschatology through tundra,

mangy Everyman.

Lambent beatitude, then –

shaggy speech, shepherd apocrypha.

1.6.16 

John Ravlin, Boundary Waters Canoe Area, MN  (1940s)

Woods behind Shriner's Hospital, Minneapolis

the plain senselessness of men

BIG WIND

Poverty is the best education.

Lady Poverty

& sister Poetry

are twins – identify with a long line

of holy fools, primitive peoples

punished into meekness

by most extreme duress.

Fort et dur (judicial phase).

Abe Lincoln with his Choctaw cheekbones,

Black Elk, Roger Williams,

William Blackstone... hymns

in the wilderness (breeched from stones)

float toward a gray middle ground

of sky.  Shy of names –

since the herm what frames

this Percy-dervish meadow-go-round

of constellations... only Manitou

will do (for some).  Great

Spirit.  Big Wind.  A late

night pathos, sifting through

cottonwood, magnolia.

Only the geometer

of beatitude & bitter

pain.  Familiar Maximus-Bertha

who rises (bulbous) from the plain

senselessness of men

like airy turtle-dove

machine – kind, moderate... humane.

1.2.16

New Year on the river

STRANGE TENT

Nothing will be exactly as predicted

when the poem sets out,

like this ice-hung behemoth

heading south (serpent-conflicted

Mississippi, Father of Waters,

Rio del Espiritu Santo)...

& as the prophets foretold

I will make all things new (stutters

Moises, making noises like

Elijah, taking off).

Hart, like emerald elf,

leaps toward her ruby Rubicon –

somewhere beyond Milan, Miranda

(Paris, or Trebizond)...

my aerial’s magic wand

fails here, even (lost memoranda).

Only I know that steed King Richard

sought in vain – Pegasus,

rough burr-man mule (Francis) –

drums like a hidden Thunderbird

in his own battered, broken heart

(Earth’s fleet beatitude

within his grasp).  Rude

hut, strange tent, Somali hurt,

forsaken boat... the Mediterranean

salt will keep each relic

Antikythera mechanic – as

my Redeemer liveth (unforeseen).

1.1.16