a little air

ALMOND MEAL

A little air, a melody

out of Mendelssohn, maybe –

like a wisp of smoke you see

afloat above Red Wing one day.

Like pipes out of Apollinaire,

trompette marine – sole

zigzag rigmarole

of an enigma (serpent’s lair).

You walk the blank maze, Oedipus.

With ghost of Ariadne

by your side.  Keen

pal, forsaken thesis – surplus

collateral, original

betrayal.  Henry Adam’s

dusky twilight madam’s

mad, quiet... a virgin owl

nested in stone Columbia.

Only her bird’s eye

as the crow flies

correlates phantasmagoria

out of the desperate heart of Cain

into clay valves

where muddy stars revolve;

through the dawn labyrinth again

from light, toward light, with light

blazing mild power –

like some firefly bower

mowers glimpse of a summer night

                  *

beneath remote aurora-shower

bearing fathomless delight

miraculous & right

to chastened human hearts in flower.

So I behold Dante & Job,

David the King,

hedged by ironic ring

of instinctual violence – the mob

of envious, avaricious rivals

circling their prey

to make King for a Day

once more.  Florentine hovels

I see transposed to Catlin prairie,

vertiginous Beatrice

mingled with Platte clay.

To the horizon’s elegant Bluejay

molts saturnine Cawtantowwit

with amorous Jenny-

Jonah; they buried be

only to soar in monarch-flight

O harbingers of Milky Way

whose kingdom is an Ocean

Stream – salty communion,

sea-green flock of Liberté!

Out from the massive turning of the wheel,

where Miriam churns the cream

of every starfish dream

into her almond meal (Messiah-seal).

5.16.17