Dreamsong heads downstream

FRAIL SKY

The sheep in the mosaic, in Ravenna.

Ravens in the scroll,

in the temple (Emanu-el,

off Morris Ave).  & in Siena,

Lady Pax, lolling like Jenna

on the couch, beside

Justitia.  Wide

open, now, your Burchfield scena –

wind, grassland, heartache.

What brung them blues, O shy

bird bro?  Frail sky

disintegrates in Birdy’s eye, beak

cradling bright penguin soot of Man.

Handing his crozier

gently to its heir

a sheepish Father Also-Ran

smiles, mild as any lambkin

Pontifox.  Herder-

gypsies circle ferder

into desert places.  Julius Putin

frescoes chimp dominion, over

stalag mites hiked to hell –

old human story (well,

there goes the antelope).  Clover

for meadows, cottonwood for bison...

Amaranth? – or pick

your poison, Hobo Dick.

I’m rippling a dreamsonge Union.

2.29.16

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

BOAT-MAID

Primeval spring, at the center of the forest

at the source of headwaters

where mothers find daughters

& fathers, sons... your robin’s nest

I sleepwalk toward, beneath half-notes

of chickadee, shrill keening

wail of cardinal, seeking

Persephone (between ice-flotes).

Psyche, Ophelia, Juliet...

your muttered hobo-names

for fishing lures.  These games

of avocation... drowsing yet

below Cahokia, the Kore fields

of poppies (Orleansville

or Alexandria)... Île-

de-France... Ariadne’s golden wheels...

Old Guillaume with his mummy-crown

smokes goldenrod & wine

beside the snoring Rhine.

Hobo might catch a Jonah-fish, or one

might swallow him (it’s all the same)

pining beside the brook

of Lethe... – say there, look

anew, McDuff!  Her ancient name

is Cora – she’s a round boat-maid

of cedar (juniper);

her berries are pure

blue, honey – she’s evergreen (almond).

2.26.16

wedding ring-structure

FINGER-DAB

These sibylline papyrus leaves,

so many shades of raven-

ink, scribe-feathered Ocean

etched with moony mesmer-waves...

The earth’s a musty limestone book

Psyche a palimpsest

charting gilt-emerald quest

through eerie oreille (slant rook

to woody isle, Macbête) – a flickering

archaic pain-matière

or wedding ring-structure

spring Geraldine Fitzgerald flung

for blue-eyed boys & one grey heir.

The old man frets in dust

& stone; his ferryman

(Rouget Blackstone) fins through the air

from northern Iowa to Eire;

the turtledove they seek

has grown so pigeon-meek

her flutings barely skim the lyre-

string.  Once in Calabria

flint-hermit Joachim

pictured a raptor-flame

plummet through time (vera-

mente Kiev-pointing).  Gentle

Columbia, please ravel up

my rusty finger-dab...

lips’ labyrinth, rose-granite mantle.

2.25.16

Among the people that you meet

CLAY PERSEPHONE

The fresh air by the Mississippi

that glides to St. Louis

from here – muddy promise

of snowmelt, my clay Persephone.

Among the people that you meet

– around a picnic table

in Duluth, or at that fabled

native board, beside the seat

of Massasoit (near Plymouth Rock) –

one person hovers at

your back, discovers what

you need before you ask (more bock,

mayhap).  Like plucky Jeanne d’Arc

– or her twin brother, Tom

o’Hawk – she flies from drum

to flask like Nessie shatters dark

Loch Ness, grise foudre scorching east

to west.  She’s Omnipresence

in pauvre disguise – Franciscan

ass with horsepower (a Falcon-Beast).

Stepping forth into canoe

from granite lintel, W.

looks out toward you,

Eurydice de San Francisco –

straight through steely Gateway Arch

midway from sea to sea.

Notes your grave levity

melds plenitude – lark tuning larch.

2.24.16

Complex rings

MORSE CODE

Once, one limpid winter morning,

at the little white shoebox

with Russian Orthodox

sky-blue-gold Cyrillic writing

trellising the doorway, I noticed

a young man cross himself

climbing its wooden steps

& pass alone into its lamplit

depths.  The anthill maze of time

& history is echoed

in the heart’s Morse code –

labyrinthine motherlode (of crime

& punishment, betrayal &

remorse); stone battlements

& iron tongues foment

confusion in the stricken mind;

the hungry roar would hush forever

every low flute-sound

of doves (tremulous under-

side of olive leaves, their silver

ripplings). & yet a lightfoot ghost

still paces pine barrens

past tombs of emperors

& saints... his testament recast

the chaos into complex rings

of plenitude, redemption,

commonweal – knotation

of crosstreads (eternal things).

2.23.16

White Rose sets in the west

SHADOW-WELL

George Washington was born today;

Sophie Scholl was killed

as well.  Her cup was spilled

in order to brim up the bloody

mystery of iniquity that is

our history – an epic-

georgic bio-pic

or tragicomedy (blind Theseus

meets Ariadne in a maze

of corn – assumes she’s

golden Taurida... FINIS).

Wings waft into a purple haze.

The moon belongs to everyone.

She set this morning through

a window shade (pale blue

the air, drawn up from Galilean

shadow-well).  This labyrinth

contains a Minotaur

indeed – his name your

own.  The light is very thin

within retaining walls of iron

chicken-wire (chain link);

quincunctial conjunction

for plowman (Sir Thos. Browne).

Wisdom B. Justified (in all 

her children).  Madre moon

sheds rain upon human

travail... silvers the plow (selah).

2.22.16

Moonset, 6:35 a.m. (Minneapolis)

the order of the day

LITTLE MOTH

Jesus likely would not recognize

what we have made of him –

exemplar (in rite & hymn)

of royal prehistoric Zeus

or Pharaoh-gilded rain.  Human

mind climbs out of beast.

Not long ago, the feast

was drunken heads – the scar remain.

The ink dries on a twisted pattern.

Tyrant’s father-hamlet,

laden sack – fried omelet-

omen (under midnight sun).

A raven zigzags over Noah’s

bow (yew, cypress,

acacia).  Her nest

will not be found on land, selah.

Someone, singing a see-saw

in Galilee.  Sea-

shanty (shanti, shanti)

maybe.  Malcolm?  Simone?  Naw...

maybe.  Light metamorphosis

the order of the day.

Pines, tamarack (way

back beyond Ravenna, Beatrice)...

A little moth molts molten gold

out of black stone,

southwest (of high Zion).

Wings ray to Nazir tinder... (fold).

2.19.16

On a ceiling in Verona

SPIDER-THREAD

Late winter gloom.  I’m stepping down

an ice-path to the river

like an Incan on his sliver

of Andean terrace (steep, frozen).

Downstream, the dark-eyed Jessie O.

(steamboat captain’s daughter,

great-grandmother)

was just a child, coming up from below

St. Louis... O Jessie Ophelia...

Cleopatra Desdemona...

Solominka, Marina...

frescoed on a ceiling in Verona-

by-Neva, maybe (in a dream).

& I, only mere boy,

half-yearn... imaginary

Longfellow, flaking off the stream...

Your dark water-crossroads, Pawnee-

Hecate.  Whirlpool

of Eurydice.  School

of Dante’s cinder-journey.  Three

ways, all phosphoric (thundering

falls).  Only to find

that light Diana-mind

Justinian burrowed, for his high welding –

only the lightest spider-thread

from Colchis dawn will do.

For Juliet.  You too,

my child, may skip the tightrope-tread.

2.19.16

Une Saison en Fever

SUNDAY PALM

The muted still-gray river

slides past cottonwoods

& snow, makes hay towards

New Orleans.  Fevered février –

saison de décision.  Party

of the partisans puts up

game faces – trumpets

bray wide, nosing opportunity –

battle flags ahoist, strong words

spray sound (Spartan array).

She moseys on her way,

accompanied by big black birds.

My soul, you tap your Sunday palm.

Must carve down, serpentine,

through plated clay – shed skin

to utmost bone.  A Lenten hymn –

let it all go.  Beneath gray stone

lies diamond – the fiery

akme of the maker,

kamen of Cape Horn (cross-thorn).

The Rio flows toward the Gulf

into the center of the earth.

Where molten rock gives birth

to metamorphs of sheep & wolf –

of black & white, of red & gold.

This alchemy’s a Union

sparked before the sun –

along still waters (as of old).

2.18.16

El Shade-Eye

UNBROKEN SMILE

If I murmur a little in your direction,

little almond tree, lessel

mandel baum, it’s only

because you’re a little evergreen

in my heart – still leaving, leaving

from the great ash mast

where you still last, & last...

as if lashed to a breathing & grieving

breeze.  Maxims, beatitudes

sing through its rigging

(cicada-susurrus, pinging

from Maximus, Boethius)...

its compass just a simple carpenter’s

level’s bubble-eye –

a kayak reciprocity-

needle, trained on bent meteor’s

immaculate arc (unbroken smile

from sky to Ojibwa midway

way).  Immense gravity

waves emanate from a small gray pebble,

tossed off the stern like a Jonah-

pigeon, never to return –

Raven or Betyl-stone

(anchor sunk to seabed zone).

A pyramid of limestone glyphs

guards fair mum-tomb;

your skipper’s Sophie-doom

from living lips... (forever flips).

2.17.16

Rosebud mission doors

ANOTHER CLOUD

Hunchback Richard & the Hunkpapas

were driven off the earth

in hails of lead; their leather

shirts splayed in the newspapers

like ragged flags of slander (flapped

by harrying wind into

nonentity).  The men who

cornered them were full of sap –

Miles, Sherman – clinking heroes

for a swell new nation;

never had a notion

of the Lakota they drowned in woe.

The Great Spirit will judge, muttered

Red Cloud.  Old Manitou

your deeds shall deal to you.

The Rosebud mission doors are shuttered

now.  Over Washington monuments

another cloud congeals,

rubidium-fierce.  Sky-seals

are torn – rage flows in torrents

through slick marble halls, bears down

skewed scales with partisan

self-servicing, crude

greed, the yap of infinite Mammon –

armored in barking thunder-tread

of heavy weaponry

(gunfire from Albany

to Bernardino – many children dead).

2.16.16

Remembrances of 1865 (so beginneth Ravenna Diagram Bk 6)

SEA WASH

To turn your glance back, eastward, from

the height of a great orange

pier (Home on the Range

in your ear) – immense Pacific foaming

behind you... like a lookout in a crow’s-

nest – a single burning glass,

a golden eagle-eyepiece

taking in a continent.  Up to Rose

Island Lighthouse (Narragansett Bay) –

to the byzantine capitol dome

in Providence, whose gnomon

is a gold harpooner – looking away

back west, toward you.  Photoshot (still).

As when the sun stops briefly

over Jericho, before they

blow the trumpets, & the walls fall;

as if you stood before a Peto

still-life (intricate

& accurate memento

of complete stigmata-scrimshaw hero).

I hear another sea wash, sighing

round salt emerald shores.

Columba’s Iona (wars

far off, now) laved with dying kings’

repentance-prayers (touch of blessing

for the wounded flutes

of clay).  So lift your lute,

sad Frisco boy.  She’s leeward (glistening).

2.12.16

& so concludes Ravenna Diagram, bk 5

BRIGHT PENNY

J was for Juniper (Maia genus,

Jenna) – an ordinary

quiet little tree –

you find them everywhere in Rus,

U.S.  One of the cedar family –

of which great masts are made

in Massa Maritima, she said;

& note the canoe, so beautifully

wrought, that graces this garage

full of rusted implements,

old iron junk (ribs,

tubes, gunnels, disjecta, garbage)...

– no, don’t kiss me now, it’s almost

Valentine’s.  Here’s a letter

in the litter, from your brother

in Minneapolis (him & his boats!) –

expatiating on that Inland Ocean

stretching from Superior’s

index, through Mississippi

dells & vales (his new obsession)

leaving these microscopic spirals

...in the pervasive buttery

limestone underbelly

of the land... seashells, fan-whorls;

epitomized in one moist flesh-toned

stony nave & spire

(near 34th & 34).

Meek modern well-proportioned

masterpiece, harmonic matrix

of father & son (elegant

Eero, eerie Eliel) – bent

Saarinen ark, soaring to Beatrix

rondure... O navigators!  Inching

over gravity waves,

black holes, ripe graves

of wombified Vikings... cinching

one planet with your splintery

kaleidoscopes (wind-

buffeted facets of land

& sea) under Dancing Bear, Polaris!

I would scratch my cartoon of your fellowship

with the circumference

                *

of an almond salience –

one bright Penny’s (legal, tender) skip.

A dove circles the Bay there, Columbia –

where the beats gather

spliced to twine pillar,

shrouds & safety nets of a still Finlandia –

wheeling wings, massed between sea

& cedar palisades,

Pacific rock parades

& sigh of spray... enveloping, visionary

finish at the prow of fiery

sunsets!  & I recall

the rudder of it all –

kind capitan of Little Rhody,

prophet of soul liberty –

gold Independent Man

atop the mobile span

of Providence – abeam with charity!

Wrapped in cloud, the binding peaks

wink now with S.O.S.

Laurentian Divide is

where the waters separate – soul seeks

her Earth, commensurate with hope

– justice of Manitou

sluicing like rain (for you

& me) across wide prairie slope

to live-oak bottomland.  My faint

hen-scratch... mere filament

to trace the lineament

of Kalevala-coracle – St.

Mary’s fishing-boat, or Paul’s

(vain little man, whose plan

would hook Leviathan) –

one rosy ark, riding the squalls

where refugees huddle for warmth & light.

O womb abrim with life,

grail-casket, Raven-knife –

matrix of River’s coppery might –

lift up your little pine apex!

Crown my origami fleet

with fir-green fin – beat

time with silver oar (moon reflex).

2.11.16

Vladimir's Mnemosyne

FLINTY SEAL

The little height of land, pasture

behind the slough, Heidi,

in Mendelssohn – where we

hunted fireflies together

as on a giant turtle’s back

in the dark – like sparks

or bees on a gloomride

puppy stars under the black

sky – sidling, sidereal

in sympathy, friendly

affinity, & simply

love (centripetal

North Star).  Vladimir’s Mnemosyne

within the hazel wood

only pure good –

Time the shady tall ash tree

that leaves its paw-print on your brow

today.  Miniature

meteor, or sepulchre

in microcosm, negative snow-

flake, flinty seal of Solomon;

emblematic passion-

flower, heart’s icon,

salt for a matrix-flame... O Queen

of the South, nightingale’s

bridegroom, at peak of

deep star-well – Love’s

rose-nest (crowning pregnant sails).

2.10.16

Steady as she goes

VERMILION FLEM

Late afternoon.  Light sound

of soprano bell, from bass

drone of freight train

over river-bridge.  Nothing profound

(just slightly wistful).  A poet keeps

time.  In the ear’s recess,

faint heartbeat-stress

marks passage of the sheep

over the dream-track.  Nothing more

nor less.  Down N’Orleans way

the Indians are gay

tonight, beaded with coronation Flor

del Rio del Espiritu Santo.  Amen

& hallelujah, hey-

ey-yo.  Let us pray

for the grain of wheat, the salty bran

of liberation (touch of soul,

Touchstone).  So dance

your way into the trance,

Hal Marie!  & remember, all –

tomorrow’s Lent (already).  The square

of ash upon your brow

a sailor’s salty vow

to steady as she goes (fair,

kind & true).  His hand waves from

the deep – he’s called Acorn.

He wears an English crown

of oakleaf (he’s Vermilion Flem).

2.9.16

A missive from Petropolis

DEAD RECKONING

In the clear winter light, the bright life

swings through memory

like steady Mississippi

viewed from a bridge.  My wife,

whispers a tottery unknown Schweik,

hugging his beloved

flak-jacket (bullet-

holes & all) – Maya Jhenna, that Mike

mumbles to Neva (ghost of a muzhik-

moosh)... my shining

inkling, engravening wing-

back turtledove... (nuncle be sick).

Awhile soul clap in jail, this bird

will penetrate the day –

a wormhole P-Jay,

serpentine (heart’s own sail-shroud).

Like Raven, still criss-crowing

over Noah’s bobble-head –

whose flinty beak’s dead

reckoning will note the gorgeous

hillside, blooming afar, over the sea –

so that prophetic castaway

(Hobo-Jonah) will play

black Orpheus to Coulombe-Bee;

a missive from Petropolis

(long-axled hasp)

plumbs Negrepontis –

limns Clio’s last golden gasp.

2.9.16

Truth shall make you free

CHICORY MENOROTH

There were Goulds for 150 years

plowing granite outcrops

in New Hampshire.  Topsfield

nurtured them, with jagged shears,

thick brambles, frozen lakes.

They strove in relative

obscurity – no live

broadcasts, no edited remakes.

Live Free or Die.  The grumpy stoic

emits a little light,

no less – the gift outright

be given back (one life, unique).

An intuition of soul liberty,

that’s all – that one might have

life in oneself, to serve

& swerve again (Boethian quiddity);

that conscience might arise like spring

in blustery New England –

a crocus prancing gold

before snow melts; your being

perfect, in a sense (meek master

of your own ramshackle

chicken-yard, O Jacqueline).

You glimpse them off the highway – chicory

menoroth, maybe – glimmering

remote star-woodcuts,

lamps over lonely fields...

just rightness in your bones (beaming).

2.8.16

Upon a tangent in Ravenna

PEACOCK TAIL

Dawn light through circumference

of dome conveys some sense

of dreaming weightlessness

as of infinity & omnipresence

so Hagia Sophia & peacock tail

might meet upon a tangent

in Ravenna   Dante’s ancient

flame a spark, skimming the axle

of a galaxy, loosed from an arrowhead

flint, striking limestone

footprint (Galilean,

Nazirite).  Behold star in its idea

redemptio-solidarity

adamant & diamond

centri-petal (almond

mandate) everybody

Ordinary & Ionian,

the windswept sea-grass

bareness of the place

tombs of sovereign dominion

lean down to green Columba

(San Franciscan)

his poverty of means

reverberating   simple soul euphoria

& an implicit recognition

of immeasurable flow

bread, wine   now

always   (indelible, human)

2.6.16

Old Man of Concrete

LIMESTONE BROW

By the Somme, a century ago

a sum of desolations.

I had a visitation

in a dream last night.  Harsh old

Uncle Ezra – driven mad

by madness, muttering

corrections, versing

disenchanted elegiacs (sadness

in my head).  After the trenches

he would pit force

‘gainst greedy Usura –

high-boot it over squamous stenches,

inky pyramids of mental fright.

Let your barefoot Daphne

skip the alfalfa

down the nave then, rancid knight;

your whisper’s contrapuntal now

through salty reeds (remorse).

Francesca’s creaking hearse

in Rimini.  Cracked limestone brow.

Our errand in the labyrinth

is brief, & mostly blind.

The mirror is unkind

to the unkind.  A little terebinth

will slake its thirst, where lofty elms

once reigned; our monarch

is lowly – yet in his park

wings fan that once were casket-worms.

2.5.16

We seek a sign

ISLAND SOUL

I remember that tropic hummingbird

levitating in the garden

in Roger’s Providence –

over crimson bee-balm, sailing leeward

toward St. John’s (St. Elmo’s?) fire.

New World already old

when Williams left the fold

for New-Found Land – an Aztec empire,

blood-soaked under sparkling banners

– Huitzilopochtli.  Sign

of bestial regression

(eaten by bad table manners).

We seek a sign, & lift it on a pole –

bow down, force others down

before fresh idols of frustration.

Teeth gnash, flesh burns, heads roll...

But it shall not be so with you,

spake Dov the Nazarene.

One sign alone is given –

that lad Jonah, in his whale-canoe.

I recall the scene (Deserto Rosso).

Old guy, utterly grey,

cornered by jumbled array

of gray paint cans (cooped-up, coo-coo)...

We are all Seekers now, Roger.

Pacific island soul,

deep Ocean swell...

gray-green still humming (shepherd-seer).

2.5.16

Compass of Roger Williams (courtesy RI Historical Society)

Leaf to leaf, door to door

OATMEAL BANTER

Light eddying through layers

of overcast gray sky

whispering, simplify.

Willow’s underleaf, lyre-players?

Silver.  Copper-gray the color

of this beech’s mammoth shade,

whose granite roots cascade

light (leaf to leaf, & door 

to door).  Motionless in time-

space, emitting signs

her gray hide underlines

in graphite (stubborn Balaam’s

Hoover-prophecy).  The beech,

the book, will not be moved.

Ink trail of raven-dove...

bare gouache, still ground (beseech

thee, spare thy headstrong mule) –

O break the prison mold,

snow-blind brain-cold!

Where father & son meet (fool

with fool) beneath the malachite

green veins, gray matter

of bran (or oatmeal banter).

Strange personal jade wight –

shade-mutter, everlasting

Sheba.  Clouds gather

overhead – weather

lit thunder (shackle-blasting).

2.4.16

The power vacuum is a shell game

LOVE-TEMPLE

There’s a power vacuum now

below the Black Sea.

Miriam, a refugee

gives birth at stern of carrack (dhou)

& when Rachel picks up Ishmael

off the concrete salt

an angry orphan (Baltic

pattern?) flings his own skull

at sociable Medea (Simmering

Mother-of-Pearl Revolver

Hid Woeful Moonstar).

& this is just the Evening

Mirror (ravening Wolf-

Mammon).  Somewhere near

(gray whisperdame’s here,

now) Jonah will surf from Gulf –

stubborn mule of humility,

his meek almond eye

only echoes her sigh

(Mary’s blues... welling salty

humanity).  This continuum

of mother-of-pearl, on

the inner lining (onion-

dome anchoring heavy ouragan-

glissando) shapes a simple

turtleshell rainbow –

twilight will bestow

pink robin’s-egg Love-temple.

2.3.16

Where the crooked sumacs are

BACKWARD THUNDER

The Redeye of these freight cars’

heavy backward thunder

over rubidium crossbars’

X.  Where the crooked sumacs are –

their creaky grey akimbo-structures

(rusty caducei).  Amorpho-

phallus Titanium?  No,

not quite... but ruddy, like Osiris-

Oedipus (up 3-Way Highway,

where the pylons meet).

Eddy Parallactic,

relatively paralytic – all that whey

so massive, bending light around

Caesar’s own seizures,

jade embrasures

(pyramidical, tyrannical, profound).

The iron Bruegel earth turns so,

in snowy dunes.  Until

one feathery perpendicular

percolates up (with bleaker crow).

Light eddied, slow (28, 29...)

where a spring coils

moss-green (oeuil

of Bosch, in Kansas City sun);

where Iris plants meek sovereignty

by Eero-Eeyore Gate – &

Eurydice, come late

May, rose... (tiny Iona tree).

2.2.16

MN Arboretum (Jan. 2016)

What's in a sine wave ?

PALM WAVE

This milky February sun

foretells another spring.

Still far-off – winging

eyebrow-arch reflection

of a snow-blue almond bridge.

Yet near... a looming

whisper (out of Red Wing,

maybe) in your ear.  Sweet pledge

of union, set sail southward

by wattle-crane basket

to mossy reed thicket

below Delta (belle Campagnarde).

Knot-eye of Popeye raptor-

sailor, here trans-

mogrified to mildest

peahen-cockerel (Eeyore-

Sophia, high over Frisco Bay).

Equable & everpresent

omni-beneficent

orthogonal well of charity

infusing one & all (mandala-

dome, dominion’s

doom).  Everyone’s

chest de trésor – heart’s ah,

life’s oh... amended Manitou

of Man.  For me & you,

within the vernal blue

of ocean wave (palm-feather true).

2.1.16