"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