Lightweight "The Weight"

ineffable mosaic sky

CLOUD-FEATHERS

The air so brilliant & clear today

beside the Bronze Age river.

The railroad bridge hovers

over its reflection – a light play

of diagonals, like water-spiders

on a pond, or cloud-feathers

above the Jordan, tethered

to a steadfast figure (Jasper’s

orant mariner, circumferencing

gray sea with shady palm).

That chanting shepherd, calm

beneath an indigo wheel of blazing

stars... one cheerful face beaming

from the medallion

in Classe (Apollinarian)

under darkened wooden ceiling

of abandoned ship, beached in pine-

swamp, at Ravenna’s edge.

Mere icons of a human pledge

so simple, local, omni-Byzantine –

ineffable mosaic sky

where Love bends waves

to lift us from our graves

into a metamorphosis   kind Aye

above halo of tears   you streak

with serpentine arches

agios   agios   agios

one river-rainbow   in an eagle’s beak

7.29.16

as in a game of hide-&-seek

PINE ARK

Piero the geometer

graphed the perfect dome

(that marvelous human home

& winking sea of gray matter)

beneath the curvature of San Francesco

in Arezzo – a flock of swans

of radiant intelligence

about their Queen, before the portico

(Temple of Solomon).  He’s hidden

as in a game of hide-&-seek

the wooden matrix (meek

logbox from Tree of Life).  When

Helena comes to Jerusalem

she’ll draw it out again –

sliver from a lion’s

paw, grim rib from Adam’s

galley mast.  Constantine dreams

his tiny golden honey-cross.

Mary’s Pneuma-moss

wells in the quiet kitchen... gleams.

Sweet psyche-legends circulate

around a forgotten rock

in Magdala.  The flock

is scatter-gathered... salty fate

& jittery salts plank-walk the yellow-

black monarchs of love.

Their cedar treasure-trove

is one pine ark (Jonah chi-rho).

7.28.16

Weldon finds his shoes

O FLOWER

                                   For a Tear is an Intellectual Thing

This evening light over the sink

& clutter of Mom’s pots

dish soap, what-nots

stillness of an eye that doesn’t blink

pupil of an unseen commonwealth

Lincoln-logos of a realm

Time cannot overwhelm

where Walter nurses back to health

Hart’s broken farfalla-tower

& Weldon finds his shoes

again   & Berryman his

balance on that bridge   O Flower

Joy   Out of these winter fields

where Bruegel-raven   zig-

zags   over leafless twigs   &

Guillaume’s pink turban   slowly   heals

Your graven images of gravity,

Henry   my autumn fall

1132   a burial

at sea   the perspicacity

of buoyant Jonah   one grey gull 

white-feathered underneath

lights on a wave   breathe,

Dove   lift down from empty skull

my ashen diamond   the snow skims

sparkling   under the sun

& from bright gatherings one

Flamant beams   whose warmth redeems

7.27.16

through clouds like whales

SOUL SCOUT

                              i.m. Fr. Jacques Hamel

You breathe a mist over stained glass,

like a cloud over Mirror Lake,

by the trolley road to Blake

(in Mendelssohn).  Rouen, alas.

In Chartres nave, one dark gray

thread still navigates

J-whorl, on golden agate –

Ariadne’s Way (sealed crypt to Day).

Her catenary smile will make

a lazy loop through Space

in Time; her carapace

a turtleshell – sweet curve you take

through clouds like whales, Jonah –

to find an old mercy-go-

round anew.  Like Jessie O.

on racy waterwheeler, sunray-

rain-bowed – Lady Liberty

an echo of Cahokia,

a salience of Royal Oak

(lips’ kayak lifting word to be).

Deep breath, Path P, Rhodos.

Out of a barbed-wire

cat’s-cradle (rust pyre

of Minotaur-empire) you rose –

winded with old George, the breadwinner,

& Maggie, of the veritas

caput – where Brandywine flows

into 4 Pine River (soul scout’s honor).

7.26.16

"Can you enter the great acorn of light?"

BLACK DIAMOND

This heart-shaped leaf from cottonwood

dark green & silver-gray

may float down other rivers – say

the Don, by Voronezh... or Eridanos,

through Ravenna (north of Hades)... &

each windblown plum sails

off a shakedy limb, whose spiral

roots corkscrew (like S.S. Normandie

propeller) down into a labyrinthine

seine of mounded knots...

a weedy sea-change (plot

of plots).  Black Diamond is crystalline –

common as salt; an octochoron,

regular, complex;

cubic prismatic Rex

or tesseractic honeycomb (acorn

beanie, maybe).  From her, La Paix

like some Hermione

dances to life again – see

there!  Her coracle – l’Éternité!

My raven-tesserae form nature morte.

Venn diagram for Orpheus

bent to his Beatrice-dust

in Adriatic backwater – ‘til brought

up short, like Slocum, John (Shaker

Indian of Puget Sound)

or like Black Elk, who found

her sun-spun gyroscope (stung-sweet Makar).

7.22.16

her smile shall win

GAZEBO SKEIN

Sultry evening in the Twin Cities.

The earth.  My mother’s kiln

stoked like Jersey landfill

with Dante’s willful souls – at ease

like oil on fire.  My moss-green vines

climb the gazebo skein.

Oblomov lived in vain

& died, sweet gentleman.  My light declines.

Oblomov dreamt a febrile dream,

icon of idle summer

grace.  Her lips murmur

& tickle his ear – Awake, Sunbeam...

Dante, shaken, shudders with Love

& epileptic ecstasy;

parallactic Ocean Sea

& shadowy Argo up above,

Emperor Henry on chariot-throne

of Rhodian charity.

A band of silver-grey

light-thread knots chords – the drone

of universal B-flat (Kingdom Come

with trombones, clarinet

& flute) – At Last.  FIAT.

Oblomov lifts his balding dome,

his heavy lashes... orange twin

pillars hold one Ariadne-

loop.  Pacific naiad?

Juliet?  La Paix?  Her smile shall win.

7.21.16

your fluent kingdom

NEW LESSON

Old river the color of rusted iron

you beckon me back before

shell-shocked histoire

humaine (long nightmare drill).  When

we were as flint people in limestone

hideaways, under

the glare of Viper-Vulture

in his ice-eyrie.  The repetition

of trauma exudes a pearl-shell

palimpsest (le Roi

est mort, vive le Roi) –

one slight Gennesaret wave-swell

is laved to Pietà massif, circled by Rome,

lapped by typhoons (of bursting

tears).  We are thirsting,

River, for that fluent kingdom

where Ebionite & Nazarene,

snake-handler & Sioux

shaman – every blue

highway mutt, sadsack has-been –

every humiliated woman, each

weakling sissy-boy

undone by bully

chants of dominance – might teach

a new lesson.  How once that marble

lifted into cloud...

one dove-grey noeud

vitale (breathing AMOR into dead fable).

7.19.16 

casket from Samarkand

GREAT RECKONING

Crusaders racing to the Tomb,

an historical pinpoint

in 1099.  Where He went

at 33 (a little room

for some great reckoning).  Daggers

in the eye turn every way –

shark swordfish play

for nightmare realms, & beggars

follow San Francisco up a narrow

fuse (to blessedness).

Stigmata (foolish meekness,

humble mulishness).  A wheelbarrow

carries mild infant Majesty

into his palmy kingdom,

spiky Jerusalem

(sea-rose of sandy history,

Rome’s  crabapple).  The viney mind

demands firm scaffold,

grid to climb, hold

fast – casket from Samarkand,

mercurial chasm, golden

kaleidoscope... meanwhile

one half-moon wafer-smile

of blinding white sail’s sudden

eminence rides on gray wave –

the plummet of an eagle

etches his grave seal,

marking 1132 (full fathom five).

7.15.16

Dartmoor pixie cross

Lament for Philando Castile

shadow of a shadow

SILVER THREAD

A raven stitches broken arcs

over Lebanon cedars,

through layers of cinders

on sands of Galilee.  These marks

print tracks, embed the shadow

of a shadow (of

a shadow).  Whose love

cooled into bottled borders, crow-

foot scars?  Etched into sealed eyelids

the guardians of sleep

administer fear, & reap

nightmare (endless cycle in the Cyclades).

I have no wrath, hums the writhing

wheel of flame – my smile

will melt stalactite guile

until their funny bones come lurching

from the humus... rows of soldiers

thrown from stone, their hearts

wrung into speaking parts.

Her modulation wove its sutures

out of the basalt lid of night.  The ocean

gathers all its woe into

moist glance of pain... you

hear her sigh.  Love’s Jonah-sign

one silver thread – gray clouds,

gray sea, gray gull, gray

dove... & every way

her wing turns (lifting raven-moods).

7.14.16

make it new

OLD SALT

Herman riveted to crow’s-nest,

Dante wearing out

his shoes... Weldon, forgot

by Golden Gate, & Berryman, a crust

of snow beside the limestone bank.

Moon rose from sea

with magnanimity,

night’s passionate gravity... & sank

these antithetical children of the sun

beneath immeasurable Ocean-

wave.  Matrix of one

twinkling eye... stuttered translation

from sharks’ dogma to Cutty Sark

sped rondure-eloquence –

an Ocean River sense,

human inheritance (almond birthmark).

The old salt bears his Southern Cross 

as shark-tooth earring,

tattooed heart.  The singing

shrouds (sea-urge, wave-moss)

remind him of Jonah, lost infant

of the crew – of Jasper,

& Francesca too – Ariel

in Ravenna pines (al fresco fundament).

Make all things new.  An emerald gong

plumbs planetary tides –

sun-shimmer plies

Gennesaret to Tuscan hills (all-human song).

7.13.16

Euxine seagull arcs

FISHING BOATS

The old watercolor over the mantle

in my mother’s house – the twin

gray fishing boats, the brown

warehouse, the whitewashed walls.  Gentle

Gloucester, Massachusetts (Grace

Ravlin pinxit – Grandpa’s

cousin, from Kaneville, Illinois).

Soft clouds, the upright crosspieces

of lank lanyards (still sea-green

harbor, granite walk).

Thinking of another work –

lone lady at Mount Vernon, culling

flowers for George Washington.

And of another Maximus –

not Gloucester’s famous

philosophe, but Maximus, blue unicorn

who sketched with Euxine seagull arcs

on stumps (his amputated

medium) one delicate

& sibylline solution.  Sparks

fly upward from the hearth of Love

– fly outward, penetrate

wolf-packs of gulag-state.

This heart simmers like kiln-hot stove

or croon of turtledove, hidden...

violet in tall field grass,

cricket near an underpass.

Willow by slow river (Magdalen).

7.11.16

Grace Ravlin, Gloucester Harbor (ca. 1928)

Henry Hankovitch on the ol' geetar

experimental Restoration Play

RAVEN-SPELT

Cedar shade of Galilee,

Aesculapian shepherd

staff of serpent-

skin, shed (leafing royalty

in vernal memory).  Magdala

Stone of good deeds done

O spouse of rustic sun

& witness won... lowly Messiah

come & gone (& come again).

Time flowers on the lips

& salty fate slips

into diamond lantern (homespun

dream of overflowing glee) – a shout

of joy from a windblown seed

of newness sown (whorled

Jubilee) – canoe-galleon, afloat

round Milky Road (unquenchable

Eternity) – that lights

gold Magna Carta rights

welded in smiling crucible

of Manitou.  So on this day

Canonicus & Charles II

framed (raven-spelt) new

Charter, for primordial Way –

experimental Restoration Play

within green cedar

fane – firm oaken chair

of planetary cheer (our Ripening Day).

7.8.16

Roger Williams Memorial, Prospect Terrace, Providence

* Note : on this day in 1663, King Charles II of England signed the charter creating the new colony of Rhode Island.  Written, and sponsored (in London) by Roger Williams and Thomas Clarke, the charter pioneered a new form of government, founded on principles of religious toleration and popular sovereignty.

granite made of air

MOSAIC INTERIOR

Hobo sets his sights on Ocean Sky

the cloud-boats drifting

stately, aquamarine

high-masted spinnakers go by

The rusty syntax of the railroad bridge –

necklace for a queen

Romano-Byzantine.

Galla Placidia, maybe... blown to the edge

of warlord chaos, courtier intrigue;

guarding son & heir

with the pale gold hair

(who will not see the Soo Line zigzag

into the forest, north of here).

The mosaic interior

night-blue with stars –

her mausoleum, like an eggshell ear.

Sea-light filters through pinholes

of gold.  The grey matière

a granite made of air

hides pigeons, ring-dove souls

within its manifold (octahedral

catacomb).  Even

Hobo finds his kin again;

the smile of cousin Jeanne will roll

a tensile thread out of the maze

of time & circumstance –

her light ghost dance

where mountains bloom (sheep graze).

7.7.16

the palm, the fiery gates

PRAIRIE ROUNDELAY

American robin on my fence

I sense you are a friend

& neighbor – here to lend

your orange breast, for salience –

swell-sign of aerial fellowship

in gravid cave-adventure

(blue waves of chicory

pacing old roads, from Boston slip

to San Francisco).  How your edgy

yodeling interrogates

our grubby, wormy hates –

sclerotic, squamous tragedy

of shriveled hearts, rancid hypocrisy!

You diagram with song

a madrigal so strong,

so many voices in emergency

merge into blueprint buoyancy –

manifest (garnet clay

prairie roundelay)

a ship-shape evening constancy.

Mute gesture from crow’s-nest G-ray!

Memory, beyond time

salts a Boethian rhyme-

beat... in quella Roma onde

Cristo è Romano.  Staunch ruddy

steersman indicates

the palm, the fiery gates,

Pacific O... – Eternity! is all his study.

6.7.16

Map of Rhode Island, 1780

wolf spider bite

I used to play a "tarantella" on the piano... I forget the composer (Mrs. Elledge, my piano teacher 45 years ago, would know).  I grew up in the Mendelssohn neighborhood of Edina, MN (named such by its early settlers, musicians with the Minnesota Symphony).  The tarantella has very ancient roots - it was originally an ecstatic, Dionysian dance meant to drive out the effects of a "tarantula" (actually, European black widow) spider bite.

WILD WEED

The monuments tremble in the mind

like shuddering leaves... the dun-

grey flesh of Russian

olive shoots (wild weed you find

along grey highways).  Clouds

resemble ships passing

(or sheep).  An everlasting

turtledove of new beginnings crowds

grey folds to elegant mosaic –

peacock splendor, rainbow

tarantella.  Help me now,

Ancient of Days – the mortal ache

of this wolf spider bite is like a prod

in the bull-dance arena.

I must rotate – ah,

Pocahontas handstand! – God

reward your goldfinch serenade!

Thunder & lightning speed

yon seraphim-steed

across acorn crucible (blade

pillaring smoke & fire upon hill

at Glastonbury, or

Golgotha).  Now you are

whittled down to walnut mind-rill...

pirouette... red veins of iron

rivet into diamond.

Bran-matière.  Pond-

ripple osprey, ranging (arak-golden).

7.5.16

Painting by Michael Gould (Elmer's glue & acrylic)

Geoffrey Hill, Yves Bonnefoy, Elie Wiesel

SMALL EMERALD ELEGY

                      Geoffrey Hill, Yves Bonnefoy, Elie Wiesel

Light at dusk across the grass

salted with white crosses,

poppies... graph of losses

rounding up the Somme.  Mass

for the mass of young men gone.

On Cemetery Ridge

the plowmen made a bridge

of bone, unbreakable – and won

the day.  Coraggio, amigos.

Somnolent River

Time will shiver silver

when the last full measure flows

from infant veins, against the grain

of human servitude –

that dominant X (rude

chi-rho, nailed up in the brain).

In the barranca (by the monarchs’

den) the battered Consul

penetrated to the well

of Golgotha.  His mind sparks

like the last firefly of evening meadows...

a small emerald octagon,

or 4-leaf clover – moon

over Eire, over the raging shadows

of the nations.  Clue vero, Ariadne-

yarn.  A catenary

arc, or smile – an airy

rack of clouds, threading the Neva R.

7.2.16

George Bellows, Rain on the River (RI School of Design Museum of Art)