a line in the road

GREY BIRD

Sarah found a baby turtle

this morning, inching along

a line in the road.  My song-

salience, or green volcano-yurt

on slow horizontal too... toward

her thorny rose-matrix;

my scrambled pick-up-sticks,

snarled with gold poncho thread

in limpid greys of dawn twilight.

This mutter-dome of whisper-

leaves, of zephyr-vespers

veils an agate lamp (magnet

for Blue Morpho & monarch flight)

pendant amid cedars –

like black-yellow flickers

gathered into marigold (O milky knight).

My abstract worming through its raving

scribble-babble, cartoon

peacock incarnation...

a myriad glancing-whorl becoming

the figure for your beaming face.

O the clear air of this

metaphysical silence!

Whose pause released one Finnish race

to lift her soaring steel mandorla

into lofty grace

planted in pivot-place

of riverine & prairie space – ah,

Psyche!  Sister Persephone!

I feel your sunny smile

now – lifting lilacs mile

on mile into an octave-harmony

                *

of active commonality –

Joy’s hero-trial!

Path P – Indian file –

thread-thin tattoo to Liberty!

So the little tree of J

is ever-living.  So

Jonah bee surfacing

tuned to your buzzing play,

high Sophie – through the fallen timbers

west of gray Verdun,

the world’s war-passion

settled in destruction.  Embers

from a wraith of spring, the sack of Prince

Henry’s royal oak...

one ashen acorn spoke

welded to purple wheel of Providence.

The crayon trembles in my hand.

The palm curves green

circumference – Iona

ray, from Ocean State (to every land);

the grey bird murmurs through the surf;

the Camelot of JFK

& blessedness of MLK

merge in the spray, resolve to turf.

So Thunderbird ruffles the stream.

The turtle is a Phoenix

swelling at the matrix –

agate child skipping (on waves of dream).

5.18.17