broody engraving

HIGH WATERSHED

As when a song transposes suddenly

into more stringent chords

the charismatic words

Dante-Apollinaire relay

from salty mud-flats of Ravenna

hungry Parisian streets

emerge with copper rivulets

of Mississippi calumet – that gateway

mound out of the bottomland

that mundus in a grove

or Okie Argo alcove

up from rustling bronze riverbend.

A pileated woodpecker

with fiery crest drives

toward dread beehives

of Annie Oakley – checkmates her

bull’s-eye – knocks at the door

of sharpshooter & target

as she drills toward

his dragon-beak of pain & blood, for

leafy harvest-time of bread & wine 

(ripe honey-gold high meed

poured out of night   freed

goldfinch   slipped from nest of twine).

So Thunderbird laced the perimeter

like one ghost dancer over

one ghost kingdom.  Power

flickered from its lightning center

                *

& with spark of recognition

the Life-whirr dove across

an abyss of non-existence

wakening green acorn nation

to restoration of all things

as it was in the beginning

ever shall   beginning

with your soul & mine.  The king’s

a monarch like Melchizedek

alighting on a milkweed

whose electric feed

mauve candelabra Shaker-speak

& lift the everlasting seed

to drift on orange wings

& ange d’or strings

to azure Gates   high watershed

for humble mule-servant   that beggar’s

beggar   slave’s life-saver

huffy Hen’s   broody engraver

Elijah’s raven   bearing messages

like crumbs of hope   for dying prophets

thirsting by the stream

to hear the pure Dream-

Songe   of limpid safety-nets

where rivers stream toward glory

in the salt infinity

one sarabande soul-tree

of beaming suns   their wake of Victory

7.11.17