unfurling Providence

ANGE D’OR

Pythagoras & Aristotle

felt both stars & sun

move (by persuasion

of love) around the atlatl

of the Pole – slow sarabande

of heart’s desire (my soul

pines for your solo Yule

just so, trompette marine).  &

though we scoff now, Harry,

your wedding dance is just

a veiled illusion – dust

on cosmic rewind, arbitrary –

yet those ripples on the strand

projecting gracefully

sound waves of sea

through particles of sand

put me in mind of relativity,

so that behind this mesh

of silken crossweave rush

soft murmurs (hush little baby,

don’t you cry)...  & a kind face

beyond divisibility

windy invisibility

ghostly ellipse of human race

gathers in gravity & mass

like a cloud-pebble

or magnified Hubble-

infinitesimal, lifted by windlass

                 *

into a masque of morning glory

from the outer darkness

with a rose compass

to inward salience (galactic story

of grave milky equilibrium

outlasting mirror-war

of swollen Minotaur

to bind the wounds with honey-balm).

The Earth’s unfurling Providence.

Slow-forming pearl

beneath the gray whorl

of a clay-worn shell – immense

agate of Agape, threaded

with light gold fleece

around a centerpiece

of Paradise (salt bread

& wine out of a stone casket).

Indomitable almond

branch, a blooming wand

cut for a lilac shoot, whose trumpet-

vine leans like a flinty mule

against vain headwinds

to Pacific ends –

vast azure of a wingspan’s rule,

bright Gate of international

ange d’or (meek door

for lambs, forevermore).

So sighs your shell, antiphonal.

2.9.17