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