LITTLE RINGS
In the muted Bruegel colors now
a raven’s-eye view circles
round twin Mirror Lakes
in Mendelssohn, so long ago.
Heidi & Holly, Jamie Freeman –
kids in a panorama
skate across my retina
from a Flemish Ice Age (Union
Pearl, foundered in frozen cup).
Laertes, will you drink
with me? I think
not, yet... & so I take it up.
How gravity spins round the Sampo,
Longfellow – how Minnehaha
eddies through Edina
like a maelstrom over Nanabozo
– silly wabbit in the old cartoon
of Manitou & Redman –
stormcloud, lightning (Hen
hides under blanket, ‘til monsoon-
tornado trundles off to Canada).
Rabbi, Rabbi... Raven-
priest, Melchizedek... when,
O Wind, will this wallowing miasma,
lethal raincloud, lift? A voice
from hurricane murmured –
when the agate here immured
in North Sea tears, as in a vice
*
floats into primeval Paradise
upon a simple kayak-word
out of the lunar hoard
of acorn-candelabra : REJOICE.
The train rumbles over the bridge
in the iron night, in the rain.
I won’t be back again
until Ferrara meets the Iron Range
in a poem coming down from winking
Starry Night. Those whorls
are fingerprints – pearls
whispered out of Ocean, drinking
planets, orbits, icons, emblems
drawn from infinite thirst
for a milky source (first
taste of infamous black diadems).
Bears navigate a starry circle
over Berryman. The stone
crypt glows in the bone-
castle. Jessie Ophelia will
step down from the riverboat
beaming for Minneapolis.
The sky is gray, is
Minneapolis, St. Paul... c’est tout.
In Mendelssohn the Mirror Lakes
are ripples ever-new.
You’ll understand... you
live there (little rings an iron makes).
11.26.16
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