2.05.2017

figure for equality



DOUBLE LINE

The Mississippi mottled with ice
a milky translucence
in the limpid air.  Sense
of coral rings solidifying.  Twice

& twice... smoky astigmatism
of a sundog rainbow.
Miss Destiny, Hobo.
Frescoed Siena formalism –

sweet couch of Pax, Justitia,
grave horsehair salience.
A gray circumference
of flags, targets... the palm of Jonah

read into fragile cat’s-cradle
or spiderweb.  A disk
of gold nailed to a casque
(louis, doubloon) – mandala-medal

for Hamlet’s mettle (or Macbeth).
Time circles on a nail;
therein hangs a tail.
Serious blasts off the mast of death.

The little copperplate landscape
of Tower Hill (the Witch’s
Hat) my mother etched
reminds me of Big Bear’s last scrape –

Henry’s author – the buried man
on Arthur Ave.,
#33 (just below
that rise) – black Denmark sun

                   *

son of Dragon Pen.  & round
the table in my heart
Little Bear will shout
for joy – recomposing the sound

of Mendelssohn, his neighborhood
(old Arthur St., where
we’d begun).  Circular
the agate labyrinth, dark with the blood

of Jonah Fisher-King.  The gray
bird croons in the tamarack.
The rigid Minotaur is back –
orange Leviathan in search of prey;

only a copper penny in a well
might draw the milky-grey
dolphin to leap this way,
& breach his livid traitor’s spell.

Only a moon-shot Camelot;
only a breathing dream.
Green island scheme
lifted from pyramidal plot

to float – an almond eye within
a double line, one lofty
figure for equality.
Sign of a Jonah resurrection

(life-saver up from hurricane). 
So pearls shine from a shell
beneath deep ocean-swell,
Earth circling Maypole again.

2.5.17

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