Transfiguration of a maze

FOUR PINES

To imitate Francis, or Guillem d’Orange;

not to turn from the world,

but my own greedy churl

to whom the world panders (strange

profit in dust).  In the sweet flame

of yearning day-lilies,

to glimpse a dew-sprung rose

labyrinth... Love’s beckoning game.

Transfiguration of a maze of sighs –

of Giuliana’s longing,

Henry Cat’s sad reckoning...

all those winding trails of Psyche,

Ariadne’s ingle eye.  The far Gate

shimmers there, in Frisco Bay;

an M, as of a catenary

smile suspended, doubles you (checkmate);

your azure horizon draws its line

between twin vanishing points,

like pillars of four pines

feathered to a target (mine).

The wellspring of the soul is as

a lodestone (from beyond

the Milky Way).  Fond

depths of Holy-Land – Eureka-adze

or axis of the earth.  Bee-mouth,

hinge of honey-door

where uncreated light pours

through... sunbeam, raying north & south.

3.30.16

Evocative river

ROGER WILLIAMS

                                    Eternity, O Eternity!  That is our business.

Evocative river, measuring

my time.  If I follow

upstream, to the shallow

infant burble of your beginning

– that rush of spring across bright

limestone, agate, flint –

I might catch a glint

of prism-diamond, rainbow sunlight

out of the meteor from whence

we flew.  I studied greatness

as a bookworm boy; was

wowed by those Prince Valiants

& Teddy Heroes who prevail

(magnanimous & brave)

in moldy Grendel-cave

& gory field (at bookshelf scale);

but not until childhood had passed

did someone jump from stone

canoe, whose doings shone

so implicate with goodness (massed

coordinate with commonweal)

as to rekindle in my mind

each uncreated end

within this flow, earthbound & actual –

as in an icon of the central soul.

Heart-pivot of earth-

planet – integral hearth –

blazing spark in a great oak-bole

                       *

of clay spheres darting from the fiery

kiln (original

Joie, ineffable).

Star of perfection (seal of history).

Heroes in graven books (sustained

by hungry scrivener-ravens).

Yet the remotest heaven’s

slope will be surveyed, garnered, gleaned

by unknown compadres (anonymous,

unheralded).  Servants

beyond themselves – tense

strings, bowed into major chords.

Two things of opposite nature seem

to depend on one another...

the bond of troth, of lover

& belov’d.  Roger’s granite door-beam

on the hillside sinks back into dusky

Rhodus billows.  Nigh

the steadfast stream, two shy

ephebes lay out a picnic blanky;

an early butterfly, black-gold,

skims toward the shore. 

You have hearkened to lore

of skalds who came before – old

poets’ conversation, overheard;

now the river moves

in your own heart – Love’s

glittering pulse, encouraging word.

3.29.16

Delirium tremendum

LOVE’S KEY

The heavy water of Ezra Pound

subsuming the human tale

to his querulous high-pitch creel,

transmuted suddenly into profound

perilous melody.  The charismatic

author, shaken by acidic

lye.  Rattled to quick

bones – John Berryman at sick

bay (delirium tremendum, guy)

shriven to the marrow.

The prof who would harrow

Hell must round up his own high

insolence.  But personality,

like poetry, is excess

on the History Express –

a bit gratuitous (to a degree);

won’t fold logically into place

aboard the freight car

of any village explainer.

She’s obstinate.  You’re a disgrace.

Whence cometh all authority?

Thrones crumble, powers

tremble – the hour’s

getting late.  Some mild futurity

yodels an octave through a vise...

the bird’s a turtledove.

Love’s key to the sky-trove –

exalting the low, humbling the wise.

3.28.16

Green confetti for Bunny Rabbi

SOLOMON’S SEAL

Morning sunlight on the riverbank.

Old bridge in the background.

Hubbub of human sound

gone quiet here – some time to think.

The ranks of cottonwoods draw shapes

in four dimensions – homesick

willows by Euphrates,

brooding vaults of shady Chartres,

cloisters clad with marigolds

on orange heights (Monte

Cassino) – where they

summon up papyrus scrolls

like hopeful honeybees, reviving

scribble-cribs in royal reels

of pearly Solomon’s seal –

fern, aloe, acacia... (ever-living

green confetti, for Easter Rabbi).

I pace these precincts with

a vagrant slouch, as if

I’d missed the point.  & then I see

you! – bright invincible

companion – always there

in your cloud-rocking chair

at End of Time, & trouble –

familiar storyteller, Indian Guide

whose hearth blazes from Southern

Cross to blue Vermilion – within

Love’s angled arc (smile-wide).

3.25.16

the cube of Everyman

LAST CALUMET

The Big Sky we all inherited

glows in the subway light.

Glimpsed through the Reflector-

Net (right thro’ the Western Gate).

Like rays focused on a beam

in Apollinaire’s eye,

mass merged in energy

enough to die – you joined the stream

of unknown soldiers (Harry Poilu,

Joe Middleman) fusing

with bronze sea-gong

(tall, serpentine).  It boomed for you.

A copper coin, at the bottom of a well

with Choctaw profile, Roman

grin.  The cube of Everyman

only squint of salt – a dry seashell.

Roger the Seeker seeks his soul

in that upper air (a wind

so free).  Love pinned

him to the still-life door – oak bole

of union, preternatural;

a chrysos-oil in old

dry woods (cold

boughs, so late-imperial).

Gold thread, gold hair.  Apollinaire

smokes his last Calumet.

Salt breeze, dockyard, fishnet.

Doves in grey clouds disappear.

3.23.16

Venice - Rimini - Ravenna

BLUE MARBLE

The lattice-work of Ariadne,

barely (in my crepuscular

History Theatre) there.

The river flows on, over yonder –

Eridanos, Mississippi, Po –

moving past this osier

excellence of rare

dear Dr. Wise.  Minerva, Virgo?

Beatrice, Julie Littletree...

Maggie... Miriam

of Bethany, or Bethlehem...

limpid over hopscotch Sally

gallivanting crost her vaulting

Paradise of glimmering

frater Pantocrator (wing,

knave, to that sheepfold ceiling).

Meanwhile my double creeps along

like Ezra the Venetian

Blind, touching the stolen

Rimini passage with an aching

brow; beyond his haunts by the canal

& sibylline bone-staves

Franciscans hid in caves,

a living shepherd leaps the wall

(disguised by Ariadne’s woof).

These corridors are spongy

depths.  So take the plunge –

blue marble veins Vitale’s roof.

3.22.16

This old man goes rolling home

SPRING-STEP

Sunlight glints in flash-of-gold

on blue-gray lashes, curling

sea around each green-

black pupil glancing from cold

Pontus-depths, like lacquered pearl.

Each soul hath such a wild

wee isle – immurèd child

of even-star, whose raven whorl

beams out of everwhirr – bright

innocent prinkster, fleet-

footing the complete

spring-step, so shamrock-intricate;

Tara, Soissons, Iona know

how low she twirls, she droops

before her leaping swoops

a coign... Elijah – let her go!

Light-nimble Columba... thundery-

coot’red Geraldine... – fits

Geraldine, the crown fits

Geraldine!  In a wheel of clay

through the eye of time – in a ray

of light, through a feather-

full of waterfalls... there,

there!  Look there!  A catenary

clover-span!  Four-folded spire,

planted on copper penny-

whistle... one milky-

black Eire-eye rose Paycock-fire!

3.17.16

Caw-caw of chi-rho

WRY PLANET

The caw of a solitary crow

tracks its own echo straight

through the sonic vanishing point.

Past fanfare of the here & now

through a pinhole in the iris of Osiris

or some other shadow

Everyking from long ago.

Some Isis Peirce-the-Veil, or Most

High Elephant from Nile-source

cradling Victoria

for Homo Sap (Erecta) –

kindly Melchizedek, primeval Spouse

offering his star-crossed bread & wine

beneath Polaris &

the Twin Cup-Bears

to lift each soul into his milky Sign.

I hear the rasping of an iron swing.

C-row... chi-rho...  Behold –

a shepherd in his fold

of 99 lambkins!  The last king

looks out from bairn-cupola, a crown

of stars.  A gardener

in the graveyard.  Mary’s

pal, incognito (Son of Man).

A retina, streaked with a spectacle

of tears.  Psychopomp

beyond Caesar’s last trump.

Ocean-continuum... wry planet oracle.

3.15.16

Spooky distances (for 3.14159............).......)...

APPLE PIE

Hobo drowses in his Einstein field

of asphodel, spooky distances.

Life’s tender differences...

only mauve peonies on copper shield.

Irrational yearning for the earth

might be the shortest path

to Providence.  Wrath

of History’s a concave labyrinth –

your soul must wash a dusty planet

down Big Muddy, Hobo.

Rise from your bed of woe;

our Hero beckons from his granite

lintel toward the circling sun.

Path P (transcendental

for each chaste equal

guest of compassing compassion).

The one who went to live with Indians.

Blackstone, Yellow Sweeting

apple-man – his greeting

(like sweet Williams’ own) a Both-Hands

Welcome, Minnehaha flute –
ray of soul liberty,

loop of Easter Rabbi...

Hart, Malcolm, Giulietta’s route

bent (parallactic) toward the light.

A catenary smile

or Life-Saver will

thread sad grooves into a chariot.

3.14.16

Mississippi River, from Indian Mounds Park (St. Paul)

There's a whole in the bucket

PLAYGROUND SWING

When Joachim Fiore, hermit-monk

hidden in heel of Italy,

after many a fasting-day

frescoed his Fauve raptor-hawk

like a rainbow-feathered calumet

smoking the end of aeons...

When the dust returns

from whence it came (Osiris sunset-

raft, veering to purple bull’s-eye)

& bones of bearberry

revert to green hay

& Alma the Corn Maid heaves a sigh

for Land o’Lakes (their vanishing,

twinkling, hexagonal

bye-bye)... then shall we all

rise too, in a Sabbath playground swing

of the Pleiades – & wheel with Mama

Ursa Major, in a New

World Symphony (Ojibwa

Lullaby, scribbled on your way

from Minnehaha, Anthony).  Because

the whole in the silver bucket

is a river-song (Pawtuxet,

maybe) sweeter than ever was –

is your redemption-hymn, O Solomon.

Sheba the Buffalo Lady

knows it, as does Maggie

Galilee... The Eagle from the Oven-Sun.

3.10.16

Primeval Spring

TRACERY

They leave a track across time,

the sea-salt souls – faint

& delicate as painted

tracery of April birch-limb

shoots under a pale blue sky;

massive as meteoric

stone flung from the thick

of heaven (dark as a raven eye).

Unreadable profundum – yet

a trace of what they loved

remains (as in an alcove

names are tapped in cloudy granite

for a terse echo of foregone delight).

Then centripetal gravity

sheds all formality

& mutters from the depth of night

the soul’s original, L-mast

uprightness – earliness;

birchland of quietness,

in boreal Aurora dressed.

Blackstone & Williams, Edward Coke...

such men of merciful Law

& lawful Mercy... & I saw

the matrix of your Liberty – who spoke

with spokes of fire upon her brow.

Psyche, Persephone...

Cana, in Galilee...

primeval Spring, welling forever now.

3.9.16

Walk through the mirror

MINOR TEAR

Bleak winter shades... crows in the trees

beak-gnashing, rasping (caw-

caw, hawk-hawk).  Low

Earth, rotund silentium (dregs, lees).

Stillness of still-life – Brown Decades

(hoist Peto).  The Just Man

imago is just a man –

barely there, through simple glades

of green.  Mirror Lakes liked him,

in Mendelssohn.  Only

an infinitely gently-shivery

Rabbi, Hiawatha Honeybear – bro Jim,

our lunky logos (penny-loafing).

Who bears it all, past

He- or She-Cat’s paste-

up Geryon-masque (a scary nothing).

This maze contains a minor tear.

& through a crevice there

one Ariadne hair

leads you to almond-gold rain-bear.

Earth seethes with ziggurats of fraud

& blind men lash themselves

to violence (selva

oscura mitts gorilla code);

but it shall not be so with thee.

Bunny hikes one eye

& looks for wheeling Eli

to come by (benevolent memory).

3.3.16

Moss-green idiom

PRIMITIVE FRESCO

These cottonwood sentinels beside the river

in the early March sunlight.

May their sense of being right

prevail, Persephone return (forever).

My draft of yearning whispers from

bare cave.  Slight air

of seashore lingers there,

like early dream of motherland.  Home

in a memory of pinewoods, tamarack;

Ravenna in a film

of moss-green idiom –

child-realm of Umbrian yak-yak,

Firenze burble-babble.  One gold hinge

arcs sheltering lintel

over intelligible

gate of Jubilee... & it is so arranged

we never leave the shining ring.

Like a rock of Magdala

muttering ephphatha

our bread & wine are splashed with brine,

salted with everlastingness;

my primitive fresco

roughly points to show

how everything begins to bless –

when Psyche lifts from waterfall

& Raven (with a flick

of wing) is suddenly quick

Turtledove (threshold within us all).

3.2.16