paradise thirteen

ELEVATOR MATRIX

An eagle gliding motionless

& swift under the rain...

a message from the sun

outside my window.  Inverness

beyond the clouds, it says.  Dauntless

Dante beheld a double wheel

like Charlie’s Wain, meal-

sifting Hamlet’s dead-end eddies

into Ariadne’s crown of yellow

maize (Paradiso XIII)

at the center of the sun;

Dominican, Franciscan, we shall go

along with Beatrice too,

into that Minneapolis

where incognito Jesus

is a twin St. Paul (aboard canoe);

from White Bear Lake to Resurrection

Cemetery, we’ll unbury

Berryman & Mary

Magdalen right now – a Raven

intersection at Jonah & 4th,

a Jubilee bird-fest

out of the cosmic nest.

Jerusalem is raying mirth

from every corner of the universe;

the gray hide of a mule

hides one God-Jewel –

gold-sprinkled fiery agate-cosmos

      *

spiraling like fingerprint

of Everywoman, every

man.  The ordinary

ferris wheel begins to glint

with light most cosmopolitan –

green emerald of soul

freedom (personal

live-oak of Okeanos – constellation

of the Showy Lady’s-Slipper).

Be careful how you tread

this living woods of dead

leaves, sprouting crocuses – your

difficulties are not partisan,

your cures are neither red

nor blue.  The crownèd head

of King George, or the plowman

trampled underfoot by Mammon,

or the young stranger, mortally

undone by poverty,

her kids tossed into pauper’s prison

by our favorite mythologies...

we’ll mingle in the great

grain elevator matrix,

where the brightest of celebrities

& most anonymous of soldiers

meet.  Before the stars fall

through the vortex – Love

wingspans our last full measures.

4.18.17