personal compass of Roger Williams
FAMILIAR ALMOND
My snarling yarn snowballs thistle-
clumps of confusion into
the midmost of the Slough.
Incomprehensible green missile,
towing kisses from that acrid swamp
in Mendelssohn (whence
we dragged a canoe by bare
feat, Heidi, home – only to dump
it in the permafrost garage).
There are many jinxed
men buried in there, minx.
Path P was a chi-rho camouflage –
X murks the spit (twin cousins
rustling for windy blessings).
Oaky, salty Invernessings
hone your eye into a baker’s dozen –
thirstings between gold floor-leavened
loafers & a 14
April funeral (foreseen
but not seen-for). The scene’s unheavened.
Then for heaven’s sakes, let’s have it,
Lucky. Twelve’s the number
of twin seraphim (Mary
& John) & Jenny’s lost mint (Juliet)
– the mother rising in the leery
graviton – the hamlet
feeling mighty chary yet
(Blackstone on hold, with Roger steering
*
spins his compass toward the iron clearing).
West, Virginia, west
to Vermilion... yon felix
nest. Gone dragnet spearing.
& yet the guyline mumbling
of poetry retrieves
a sense of limpid leaves;
the universal shuttling
of loom with lambent seraphim
conceives an agate diamond-
crystalloid familiar almond –
6 paths of Dakota Slim
remind the mind of Eagle-Heart
(who reigns by thundercloud
of humble Jonah-bird
O sages in the Super Mart)
that everything says meet & join
in lattices of give
& take Seek ye & Live,
that honey-dome of stubborn pain
intones my cousin Juliet
great-grandmother Jessie
Ophelia madre de Jenny
listen a gentleness, O jet
of Mississippi water sip & see
the ghosts come back to me
in Paradise a little tree
of Jesse blue (a juniper, maybe)
4.12.17
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