one dusty pair of loafers

GOLDEN DOOR

A cloudy day in June.  The silver-

green hearts of cottonwood

shape an eave of old

whispers overhead – over

Hobo’s sleepy crown.  He drifts

along the riverbank

like wind.  Who to thank

for this vagrant splendor?  Lifts

one eye to meet mauve milkweed

flowerets.  The milky

pod will land later.  He

recalls the King of Butterflies – his seed

of fire, smoking bloody thorns

out of the House of God.

Beyond Land of Nod

dawn twilight hovers between horns;

the Minotaur, hideout collapsed,

glances sideways now –

he’s facing you, Hobo.

Ennui & self-disgust snap

shut his labyrinthine face.

An intellectual

despair (material

forces define our fate) will place

disconsolate Ophelia

& lonely Juliet

upon the parapet

of Golden Gate.  Barefoot pariah-

poet joins them (leaves behind

one dusty pair of loafers).

Ice coats the Minotaur’s

sealed lips.  Hobo’s refined friend

Henry wavers on river-ridge.

He breathes deep.  Steadies

himself.  Watches eddies

spread calmly (from Stone Age).

A tiny flint, like mustard seed

planted its yellow point

in Henry’s mother-heart.

The soul is feminine, she said,

her clay says welcome to the plant.

A fishy pie plate

              *

framed between what

look like Twin Cities’ restaurant

cartwheels?  Double helix, welded

with rows of keys... inside

a box of buffalo hide... ?

Disc-knot, or gyroscope... plaid

4-leaf clover in a Star of David

spun toward peace...

Frisbee (call the police)

or flying saucer?  Air-bridged

harbor, so she sang – a lightning

prism.  New Colossus

in the live-oak moss –

her beacon-hand.  Smiles, welcoming.

Grain of the laborers trains Henry’s

unison.  His ancient sigh

for Juliet-Eurydice

brings grey-eyed Emma Lazarus

out of a purple sea – her Liberty.

The seed of fire is Love –

soul’s only treasure-trove;

find Her & you have found Me

too, murmured the grey ring-dove

whose cloudy wings unveil

a glinting copper seal –

bright penny from the King’s alcove

(of Lincoln logs & Memphis marble

made).  Now Henry sleeps

in Charley-oak – he keeps

the crown of Manitou arboreal

while Hobo swims down Milkweed River

branch to branch, & limb

to limb.  Says, Go find him

who seeks you in deep-end despair.

Love’s gyroscopic equilibrium

(from seed-beginning

to rose-blooming

end) is manifest Wisdom;

she dances like a cloverleaf

until you turn with her

into that Golden Door –

her almond Agape (undying life).

6.29.17

anyone know your knots?

SHADE-CANOE

The lowly starfish, neither fish

nor star.  Rather

fish out of water, or

spark from Ocean River.  Wish

upon which?  Empty choice, perhaps –

like this rickety cedar

gazebo door, spannered

over the void for mosquito apse

(fine Roman iron).  Door always open.

Natural Bridge – sublime,

like Jefferson’s government;

only supporting vault, for all men,

women, are created equal.

Contracted limestone

hieroglyph, whose one

whole marbleized body-spiral

corkscrewed like Nut – bolted

to high arch-campanile.

Mostly invisible.

An Arctic burg (igloo-solid).

The hollowness of raven-beak –

scars like tattoos for Cain;

Jonah from Spanish Main

become Columbian Mayflower (seek

& ye shall find Canonicus, O

jolly Roger).  Darkest

camera oscura (west

of black hole, near Tasmania)

                *

filled with simple cave-sketches –

a wave-curve with a graphene

heart-keep (anyone

know your knots?) nyet – catches

hermaphrodite french wombat stray

(whom-batt to you) – punished,

burnished bronze, banished

by Moi (Great Man Two Hernee)

for coming naked from the sea

right into Nineveh

(some Who-She-Whooshee

mania).  Like Mirror Lakes, see –

glass bifocals, in Mendelssohn.

Reflective retina

bent through Ravenna

or shade-canoe of rusted iron

in Ferrara (almond mandala)

whose double curve

lets light swerve,

portable & potable.  Some farfalla

redbird’s bedrest (or robin’s nest)

you carry like pemmican

for Father Hennepin;

some amphora from Galilee (the best)

floats into harbor on a buoy

bobbing with airy Ariel

corked in oak barrel –

Jonah ex machina, sailor’s ahoy.

6.28.17

invisible Henry Church

LIGHT WINKS

A cup of sunlight floats across

the cedar octagon

of the gazebo.  June

leads summer nearer endlessness.

A squad of orange day-lilies

freckles the riverbank

where weedy Hobo sank

to the wheat.  His mother’s frieze

of blazing international neon

(banked by green hosta)

outshines them today.

These lily-petals arch a grain-

vault – great grey elevator

rounded with cloud-pillars,

where the safety-net was

knotted, finally – in memory

of J.  Shadow of a tacit planet –

moony-silver Saturn

waiting for the Golden

Age, maybe – foggy parapet

where earth meets sky (grey

overlapping waves

& clouds).  Dante’s grave’s

invisible, behind a clutter of gray

paint-pots, now – beneath a blur

of ink-wings over parchment

– where the bald eagle bent

his beak, pinned torn souls in tar

                  *

each to his or her last judgement.

Hobo looks up through grass

toward his own Ravenna’s

golden youth.  Incandescent cloud-sent

Tadzio, back from the ashes –

gesturing an orant Orient

from shore to shore.  Went

Jesus thus from Galilee, eyelashes

wet with tears (witnessed); so Henry

Tadpole Turtledove

breaches, scattering love

like baby spouting sperm whale (verily).

Invisible Henry Church is vagrant

as St. Franky’s mule –

flutters in a monarch school

through silver double dove-doors, bent

toward Mexico.  When that last Adam

lingers in a weed-garden

for Mary Magdalen,

she coos, Columbian, for him;

it is the beginning of the end.

An ancient raven hovers

over Hobo, bearing leftovers

(crumbs from a wedding).  Mend

your way, she caws.  Men do not know

how swift the river-flow,

how salt Gulf breezes blow.

Light winks from coral reefs below.

6.27.17

what you might believe

kids climbing oaks on Arthur Street, in Mendelssohn, ca. 1958 (by Mary Gould)

PACIFIC SOMERSAULT

Childhood in Mendelssohn... my mother

helped us build an igloo.

Spiral parabola

of ice-blocks, framing up a doma

seamed so fine, snow-translucent –

its arctic arc an image

(Inuit bird-cage)

of the revolving deep blue firmament.

Complex reality’s concave enigma.

Mirror-image of

a winecup-face... dove-

Jonah diving from the ship – Mama!

– spewed out on shore by Moby Dick.

The Q in Queequeg, or

Coatlicue – the semaphore

of Joseph’s coat, turned inside-out (thick

darkness shrouding every mountain-top).

Fine rational weave

of what you might believe,

while dreaming (temple veil, torn up

from bottomlands to Memphis crown).

A knot in the cucumber twine,

Apollinaire in umber vine...

a fishnet made of golden fleece.  One

lifesaver-lead sinkers the weight

of the whole wide prairie –

like Cathedral Mary

or that flute-bone poet-fishbait

                 *

goes by name of Buried-Man’s Henry

– bright grandson of the late

star Morning Star, whose crate

floated Twin Cities to the Gulf (see,

Tommy, how the dead rise from the grave).

All 12 disciples died

by violence.  The Ghost plied

her woodcock back & forth, & wove

Ariadne’s safety-net (one grey thread

bent like accordion file

from Ocean vortex, mile

on mile).  Behold how us dead

rise from fleecy loam – your dream.

We dwell in a matrix-

creation – Beatrice

skips from Florence to the throne (beam,

Natasha, from your vault-chariot)

& Juliet will navigate

the high bar of the Gate

d’Orange (Pacific somersault).

The vertical of Dante’s Pole

balances Henry’s hobo-

equilibrium... so

the message in the oak bole

from the King of starry Heaven

sets a gyroscope

in motion – Henry’s hope

& Giuliana’s love (sweet corny leaven).

6.25.17

elephant fig tree

TWISTY CALUMET

The grey matter beneath the gray dome

over the elephant’s

great brow.  Intelligent

murmur through muted horn, become

flute-sound of turtledove – a rose-

gray granite labyrinth

in miniature (by mouth

of elephant-gate) whose lid will close

this casket blossoming with images.

A concordance of old & new,

the synagogue-ecclesia

of you & me (through corny stages

of a mystery play).  Tall gnomon

of a totem pole (Raven

shadow in the grim ravine,

the wooden idol in its barren

cul-de-sac) points toward the sun.

It is Cautantowwit,

testing your trickster-wit,

lifting his twisty calumet (smoke, son).

Ineffable infinity of Manitou

embodied now – made

manifest in mode

of neighbor Nazarene, addressing you.

Come into my garden, urges he;

the Magdalen has found me,

so shall thee –

her almond eye’s polarity

    *

seeps Providential clarity

as clear as spring rain,

clear as tears.  Enter

my garden, friend – you’ll see.

My Providence was like a field

where Hobo limped through

wildflowers, bumbled into

common day – let childhood yield

to manhood, womanhood – O bright

ripe liberty to keep

sweet civil peace (a steep

ascension to the morning light).

The message of the good grey elephant

is like an invitation,

then – to taste Creation

as a gift of vine & wheat... sent

from grey clouds like rain, or as

a green palm spokes its wheel

with light.  Let it reveal

itself – ultramarine, topaz,

gold, diamond.  In articulate shade

of elephant fig tree

cresting azure Sydney,

reckon the pattern starlight made –

an octahedral Southern Cross

lifts through your heart

transporting human light

to everlasting dwelling-place.

6.22.17

my circuit is circumference

HONEY-OAK

Sunshine in June – one whole note

melts into the chord

of summer.  In the old

garden of Time, the poet’s boat

extends its shade toward evening twilight.

The golden ratio of the sunflower

stretches to the nth power

(its perihelion); clay speeds to insight,

cartwheeling uphill into angelic life –

that bright-gated City

whose anti-gravity

magnetic North amends all strife.

Through this fan-feathered diapason

of a planet, the limpid figure

of a limping friend, your

sister-dove (gray pebble, midnight sun);

her hazel eye takes in mortality

as a grave garden absorbs

the one whose goldfinch orb

will bend, in parallax fluidity

as rivers from Paradise stream forth

or a mustard seed

flares – life’s high meed –

a sunny gyroscope (balanced from birth).

So the Messiah-bloom of Israel

like Joachim Fiore,

Henry Flower (ey

hey yo) anchors goodness to the Pole

                 *

Star, steadfast over midnight waters;

so Infinite Presence

arcs into salience

turtledoves & fiery matières

de Bretagne (Arthurian hide-&-seek

the Once & Future King

resolves, into a ring

of riven oaks & golden fleece).

The One Who Rose from the Dead

lives in our midst –

Who left his Holy Ghost

as marigold, to blaze undaunted

Hagia Sophia (with a million eyes);

American peacock (turkey?)

or Aramaic poppycock (see

how archaic our ways – how wise!) –

only Phoenix-Turtle comprehends

how from dream-song flame

Reality revolves the same

again... as when a potter bends

her starfish over azure sand

& lofting clay from seabed

into galactic Roundhead

Cavalier (old Charley-Horse le Grand)

curling himself into green honey-oak

until the lightning stroke

flashes – where thunder spoke

the wheel that spun Ezekiel (Rose-Boke).

6.20.17

Hobo's dream-sponge

MILK-CRATE

The pearl shines at the bottom of the harbor

as a lamp glows in the darkness.

Color of St. Francis’

donkey (silver-grey, St. Thomas More).

Henry’s church is in the grey-scale too;

a weathered pebble, like

an unknown soldier (Psyche-

cloud, veiling the ocean’s blue).

Bright pennants of the jungle world

(green, orange, black) are

silky glass, refracting back

primary triplets of an orb unfurled –

gold sun, red clay, & midnight sea.

Her mouth is milky ivory

from Santa Giulia, in Brescia...

her parabolic harmony dovetails for me

into a grail from good grey Elephant

(whose queen is dark & comely

Africa).  So Henry’s comedy

plumbs bottomland; its hierophant

is Hobo in disguise, pearl-diving

from the Golden Gate;

his Beatrice-Juliet

is Orpheus-Eurydice – is every living

soul, sleeping to swim the wake

of Lake Victoria.

Birth-rite of Jonah –

rock-dove sparked for Zion’s sake

                *

& all Creation’s sign of Noah.

Suddenly, like lightning

we are made – brightening

kids from adamant stone – Aloha,

planet-people!  Welcome to Providence!

A grey Rabbi heeds

my mumbling... new needles

green the stems of an immense

Jerusalem spear-flower... Juno

to Juneteenth, July to Jubilee,

the fallow air grows milky

& the Glory of the Lord will show

petals of pink & indigo

before too long.  Behold

the twin mirror-doors of bold

St. Thomas – he who was slow

to believe.  Now the dream-sponge

out of Resurrection Cemetery

sucks Lazarus like Henry

into a mystery play.  Plunge,

Cautantowwit-Raven, into the deep

Black Sea.  A Thunderbird

breaches your salty word

in spumy clouds of Neva-Sleep,

& Woodpecker hammers out Twin

Oak’s mandorla-canoe –

a Restoration Day, for you.

Casket of Lazarus – a milk-crate tin.

6.19.17

poem for Father's Day

John Gould rowing in Oxford, ca. 1995

COPPER SEAL

Father’s Day.  Here’s a quiet hallway.

Grandpa’s twilit apartment

on Delaware Street.

Cozy, gemutlichkeit, OK.

Grandma’s old Revolutionary print

over the dining table.

George Washington & nimble

Lafayette – their filial détente

confirmed in pizzicato minuet.

Grandpa’s brass cannon

shell shines dans le coin –

Et nous voilà, sieur Lafayette.

So the crimson seal in melting wax

like Hamlet’s father’s ring

purls out, expanding

into undiscovered final acts –

Pacific reconciliations, palm-

print circumferences...

the moss-green salience

of Liberty’s majestic calm.

The Son of Man looks to his father

as to an anchorage –

firm stay against dry rage,

banal amnesia, unruly weather;

history would lose its thread

& be estranged, without

a commonality of thought,

that human constancy – dead

                *

center of the curly sprout

who springs up (fed

by seedy Shakespeare’s Head)

to brazen River of the Holy Spirit

(Father of Waters).  Before all times

the soul looks out in joy

upon a wide Creation Day

like mossy meadowlands – rhymes

with Honest Abraham in his

absinthe mandorla – bright

JFK & MLK – light-foot

Truth come marching in (this

copper seal of Peaceable Kingdom).

Light of fathers everywhere,

the milky dawn-lair

of the race, breathing soul freedom –

like whisper of Lipsanothek

(cross-braced in elephant

ivory from distant

Brescia) – a life made perfect

sustenance.  So a little acorn

from William’s Catholic Oak

(in windy Providence) spoke

to me once, as father to son;

as a green man in emerald coat

smiles from a heart of sunny

gold, so dauntless – funny!

Lifting my heart to his coracle-boat.

6.18.17

John Gould, U.S. Navy, 1945

a flower for Bloomsday

CIRQUE MATRIX

Gray Hobo-bird faces a problem :

how to save his own long

featherweight fern song?

How to rewind a strung-out poem?

Effigies & icons flashing by

like ripples in his eye –

Burchfield, El Anatsui...

Hartley, Martin, Klimt... Johnny

Jasper... fond winter raven-

oeuil of Master Bruegel...

Pompey, in the empty well

of Yahweh, was befuddled – No One

There.  The clear plein air of Quaker

meeting house, of Shaker

chair.  The carpenter’s

simplicity of Philadelphian law-

oracles.  We hold these truths...

But Hobo’s murmuring his

Nil Reed Candace house;

his prairie wind blows wild (Ruth’s

trail through mazy corn, tracking

Boaz from Goshen-land).

With poem-in-a-can

in hand (his pemmican) & Red Wing

Thunderbird-Woodpecker perched

atop his hat, he moseys,

slouching, sea to sea;

aboard his polar bear canoe (birch-

                 *

light) he circulates a mystery –

where be this Henry Church

round whom leaf-sundials march?

Planted in Resurrection Cemetery?

Or hidden in a holm oak tree?

The painted whisper gallery

enshades invisibility.

Will he sleepwalk forever, Poetry?

The milkweed monarch fans meekness.

This moth is camouflaged

brown dust.  The sagebrush

rolls through red deserts, the cedars

pine for Juniper (slate-blue).

Time’s broom sweeps clean

but tiny seeds remain.

A microcosmic mustard-yellow

gyroscope (spun in Ravenna

backwater) balances

Galilee on Providence;

the bicycle with one duo-antenna

twirls its silver spokes into

a rose-wheel window.

Where did Harry go,

Hobo?  He’s hidden in Otranto

glass.  He’s riding Pegasus

into a cirque matrix –

cartwheeling carny tricks

as Henry Flower Wilderness.

6.16.17

Shakespearean marzipan

THREE BEARS

Behind fine axe-hewn basalt

of the Incan hive, an eye

like Aaron Siskind, maybe –

quick, delicate, alert.

Mortised ramparts of any state

mark its mandala-border;

stone blooms of order

warp twisters of love & hate.

Only this human heart of flesh

harbors invisible diamond –

petal-scent of almond,

marzipan snowstorm (baked fresh).

Imagine one simplified snowflake

in three dimensions, spinning

like a gyroscope (one wing,

one leg) after one thunder-shake

of glassy dome – Will’s trident, maybe

in a late romance (Blackfriar’s

globe).  King Henry sires

trouble for himself – falls into sea

pursued by Bear.  Near Normandy,

flagship goes down – she’s lost,

it seems – until at last

Hermione steps forth, sleepy...

La Paix (familial, civil, global)

breathes yet, to dance once more.

It was Sir Thomas More,

lapped in bearskin, at the North Pole

                 *

who played the bear, who played the fool;

who played Disoriented Lamb

bleating I am, I am,

who flit the snowflake (melting soul);

his mother (Everywoman, from

Mulberry Street) wept

for the shame; she slept,

& it was glory in the end.  Hum

flickers (pictures in a whisper gallery).

The cranium of Unknown

Soldier wears the crown.

Empires of high frozen sophistry

shudder beneath an infant’s smiling

gaze.  It’s not the wise

who find the way (surprise!)

but every lovey-dovey Sing-Sing

resident – repentant heart, meek

mule.  Chaste planetary

hearth, Psyche-egalité –

bright thunder-akme... slant, oblique

world-pirouette... Hagia Sophia

in a peacock’s fan.  Tango,

barefoot kid’s fandango

under the sky-vaults in Ravenna –

light of my light & yours,

Waltz of Three Bears

by Mendelssohn.  Flares

Franciscan, by Pacific shores.

6.14.17

cottonwood sky

BIG DIVE

In the steep ravine shading the river

Hobo’s eyes follow

smooth limbs upward, so –

into a cloud of silver-green shimmer,

Columbian sky-nest

of cottonwoods.  His squint

moseys like scattered flint –

mishmash out of Ocean states

into some kind of Land o’ Lakes

matryoshka doll, or Land 

o’ Goshen Big Rock Candy

Mountain.  The poet is a sacred

fool (or cataleptic converter)

& every shepherd’s an

effete abomination,

just a bump under a bumpkin tower.

Hobo keeps an eye on Henry,

ambling up there

on River Road.  Air-

head royale, full of acorn honey,

soldering his Goshen stone

into a manic-hollered

coat of caustic red

Rhode Island rooster-throne –

a sharpened archaic Goshen point

left at Minnehaha

Falls by some Ojibwa

dream-boat.  The time is out of joint

                *

he cries, with a Norwegian accent –

O Jessie, O Ophelia,

my little tree, Columbia!

Come tripping back unto the oak tent

once again, out of the Ocean foam!

Flip your big dive, big Dove,

into reverse – for love

of Yahweh, & of Manitou, & home

sweet home!  An infinite Intelligence

invisible as air,

kind as mon cher

Francesco, wise as Providence,

clear as the sky vaulting these gray

heart-leaves – our octave,

Henry, Hobo... wave

on wave, on wave (lithe sun-ray).

From the standpoint of ineffable Person –

an infinite free Spirit

(older than Cautantowwit,

with all his Raven-wit) – a Someone

omnipresent, serving restoration

to a hurt creation – mercy

exudes like oak-tree honey-

gall.  Some smiling heart-shaped cotton-

wooden crossroad Livingstone –

green-gowned Sophia

traipsing Milky Way-a

Sarabande (one, two, three... one).

6.12.17 

the melodeon of civil peace

GREEN PALM

This silver light-pull on the black pathway

like a miniature dragon or

sperm whale (grey Minotaur

immured in Ocean labyrinth)... Ariadne

dropped it here for me, maybe

(bowline from safety net

strung beneath Golden Gate,

or strand of hair turned silvery

along the wheel of time & gravity).

In him the root of the matter,

wrote Cotton Mather –

he meant that turbulent sectary,

mild Roger Williams.  An apple root

it was, the legend holds;

clasped in earth-folds,

his buried limbs became sweet fruit

(at Prospect Terrace, where his bones

were laid).  Sweet peace,

he called it; a release

into that harmony among distinctions

Roger christened Providence, & we

e pluribus unum –

a spiritual freedom

planted in magnanimity;

a willingness to mingle tares

& wheat, so infant conscience

tried by experience

find its own starry stairs

              *

& not by force, but gentleness

its ripening prepare

to climb past nightmare

to the melodeon of civil peace.

So gather up stray iris-strands,

Henry.  That self-same

moonlit trail (slim

path between wrath & Rhode Island’s

liberté) was Alighieri’s narrow way

between Imperium,

Ecclesia... low hum

of Jonah-Beatrice (out of the grey

cloud-surf of Ocean River).

Garden & wilderness,

Solomon’s shepherdess...

airy Sophia in Hopkins windhover...

O delicate light-threads, pendentive

on twin pillars, anges

d’orange...  Who arranges

your catenary smiles?  You dive

with her dive, you rise with her rise,

surfacing... Hail, Jonah!

Out of the whale, Jeanne-

Arc!  The mercy in your eyes

– wonder in ours!  A gold mandorla

where the twin points meet –

meld into one – & greet

the Union with green palm... Alleluiah!

6.9.17

it's not the actual statue

COTTONWOOD FLUFF

The poem curls out of the soil

of speech, an idiom

of natural freedom –

not the symbolic Rose (Étoile

du Nord) but the actual rambling

pink thorn-petals

pendulous stained glass

welds to parallactic lightning

(baptism of liquid fire).  These two,

the symbol & the thing

itself, twirl interlacing

through the June weather – like Hobo

& actual Providence, the scrappy

burg Rog Williams named.

Free habitation, framed

by metaphysical hope; happy

locution for Rhodos-location.  Only

an Ocean state of mind,

maybe – where you might find

your inner JFK, sailing toward Galilee;

only a craggy Catholic Oak

whose simple fortitude

cools tempers rude, &

opened ears when Blackstone spoke –

lifting his anima naturaliter christiana

to chant that common law

inheres in English & Ojibwa –

sponge of manna-Minnehaha

                *

drifting like green Columbia

or cottonwood fluff –

adhesive, light enough

for grave thread-whispers (ahh...

I understand).  Radiant Naiad

à New York, lifting her torch

for Liberté... hopscotch

of bare feet round hummingbird

maze-vat... such were smoke signals

for a wide corn-dance –

pregnant sum-trance

of orbic humankind, out of deep wells

(perennial realtà).  It’s not the actual

statue, the actual state

but what they indicate

(A-frame of Lincoln-log) – rational

celebrations of Memorial Days...

Thanksgivings (4th

of July an afterthought

of fireflies)... myriad ways

a Union of republican consent

gathers (in common sense,

civility) at the tense

apex of divine intent –

buffalo tepee of Providence,

Manitou table

of justice; peaceable

kingdom, benevolent, immense.

6.7.17