8.30.2017

i.m. Don Peppino Diana



SEA-SALTS

Late summer by the Mississippi
yields an agon by the Po.
Fording his Rubicon, Hobo
hunkers by crossroad (at path P).

The stubborn soul, a milky diamond
in the murk, seasons a world
of wounds with salt – hurled
Don Peppino to the ground,

who fell as lightly as a moth wing
to the concrete men of Moloch –
smiling firmly, struck
a blow with kiss of peace (like visiting

ange d’or).  Take him to heart,
Henry, the mirror said;
that mensch you left for dead
leaps like a saltimbanco to his part

bench pressed against each prison wall.
Melchizedek demurred
Don’s invitation to world
domination – orange towers fall;

that milky mutter from a cloudy center
framed Ariadne’s nets
(enmeshed with quipu knots)
into a corn-gold maze.  You enter

Notre Dame like a gray wave
of seamless limestone
turning emerald... bone
by bone, like Jonah from the grave

                 *

her naval spine arches a dolphin
gray on gray – her eye
a waterspider... golden fly
fleeced with fine thread... riverine

almond, flanked by an equal sign.
This acorn fell from heaven;
here it shall remain,
be not removed – a seed from Okean

(Kiev domain).  While the Son of Man
through the murmur of murk
will shine, & do his work –
his echo in green shade, his twin

like Thunderbird flares out her wings
& rustles in the poplar leaves
where Peppy Di conceives,
Maria Retina perceives – brings

everyone to that shade garden throne.
It is a cryptic gravity
1132 feet high
& etched with J, or eagle eye – lone

outline from a deep loom’s frame
(Martin A. might say)
or copper penny for the Day
of Jubilee – ineffable clear cipher-game;

Tommy the Woodpeck’s narrow marrow-
proof; the oakleaf’s laugh,
or Death’s own epitaph –
lifting grey sea-salts into fresh tomorrow.

8.30.17

8.29.2017

in the acorn dome



GREEN HOME

This August light is equal everywhere
& tender in its knowingness
of time & our faiblesse.
Impartial good is manifest to share.

The little boy with yellow gyroscope
hugged tight by Giuliana
on a sidestreet in Ravenna
sketches balance, equilibrium – her hope

the son grows like a sunflower
to soar into some wide
limpid Italian countryside
(gold into golden sunshower).

A rooted pine on point of land
or evergreen holm oak,
each invisible spoke
of living soul is regal, understand –

an incognito King or Queen
en masque as servant
on this earth, blent
in a bond of I with You (unseen,

but felt).  Substance of the sole command
of natural law (to love,
to love, to love) – above,
below – from Providence, Rhode Island

to an anchored grandeur on Pacific strand.
Whispered from acorn dome –
cherished green home
whose restoration here is promised (planned).

8.29.17

I have a dream



PLAIN CLAY

I have a dream, sang the buffalo-
voice, I have a dream
when the will to redeem
lifts a heavy soul, bent low

amid murky murmurs of lost
innocence, out of the lake
of fire (nightmare). Take
my hand, come to this Pentecost –

harvest of kid from lambent cave
(wick drawn from water
up to Pharaoh’s daughter –
firefly corn-blaze, flickering in nave).

Lean petrified wraiths gaze, wingรจd
through Ravenna gloom.
Dante walks home,
his lesson fin (carving INTREPID

into night’s milky ark of galaxies).
A net resolves to surf;
a seine makes common turf
out of plain clay – paradoxical

Francisco-mule, clip-clop clumping
until he climb the octahedral
keystone of the cathedral –
orange Chinese lantern, miming

remote & lonely lighthouses
(Rose Island Light, for
Narragansett raven-shore).
Sun in your beak (Cautantowwit’s).

8.28.17

8.25.2017

light grows lighter



CATLIN WATERCOLOR

Late August light grows lighter.  Wispy
between extended shadows.
The cricket chorus has
a song for this, by Mississippi

banks – that bronze sustaining bass
in parallax of plaintive
high-pitched creel.  I’ve 
got to plead the crickets’ case,

quizzical Hobo mumbles to himself.
What good’s that Easter
Resurrection, if there
be no faery morn, silkworm to elf?

That is, no general coming back
to life... old Yeats’s sense
of unquenchable experience?
Manitou pipes at Fond du Lac...

as in a Catlin watercolor
along shores of Great River
life-lines   etched forever
in raven-ink barge Seine-trawler

or in a summer garden   with Apollinaire
our flimsy smoke lifting above
rooftops   & fading   eve of
war   Christ the Pilot in the air

over our heads   the gentle hero
retiring into poplar-voice
grey Hobo   warbling rejoice
inscrutable Holy Wisdom   flutters near

8.25.17

8.23.2017

Matiere de Bioluminescence


TABLE GUEST

The green orbs of the butternut tree
land with a soft clunk
in the August grass.  Monk
Hobo absorbs their summer gravity.

Like that statue of Roger stepping through
his doorway on the cliff
into a wavebent skiff
drifting west – like Jonah, into

the gate of Leviathan... an inscrutable
gray brow of cloud, swimming
like dove or seabird... everything
swallowed up into transparent fable –

Columbia, emerging from the ocean mist.
An infant newness in
the soul’s old wilderness,
new-resurrected as a table guest.

The feast was all prepared beforehand.
Lips fuse like the sun’s
corona.  That Smiling One’s
your sister-dove, wafting to land

her sea-rose air.  Wings overhead
shadow the dark gold
& the blood-red wax – old
regal seal (Day of the Dead).

Beneath twin doors of tin-cut mirror...
out of the cave, volcano,
hurricane... a deep-sea glow
of luminous grail-fish.  Draw near.

8.23.17

8.21.2017

eclipse for equal lips



LOWLY COIN

Twilight at mid-day, then rain
after the eclipse.  Little
Sophie’s 4th.  A medal
made of bronze; a lowly coin

of copper green.  Absinthe air
around the monuments.
The sickly shade of dense
black sun... Monday’s gone Friday

everywhere.  Whisper it back
to me, slowly, slowly.
Parallax of late Dante,
his painful feet beneath a wrack

of Roman marble, winking tesserae...
only a rain in Voronezh.
Profile of a Chaadev pledge
to 4th estate – soul freedom, aye.

Vladimir – that other one, with
the unpronounceable name –
wanders Wyoming
(motels, mountains).  His Monarch myth,

his Morpho blues, his regal soul
from coal-speck diamond –
a parabolic almond
subtext (Rorschach mirror-bowl).

Lincoln-ghost, Vallejo cheekbones...
chaste sign of equal lips.
Sophie’s green foot trips
through her basilica’s midnight sunstones.

8.21.17