4.13.2017

meet & join


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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