at the local cinema

GREEN MOUND

I met the surviving Saarinen,

Eric (from California)

at the local cinema,

showing his film about those Finns –

Eero, Eliel – who competed

to complete a monument

at navel of a continent.

Congratulations E. Saarinen, stated

the telegram.  Nobody knew

which one had won...

uniting father & son

in gratifying mystery.  Eric, too –

the latecomer, the odd man out.

Hurt psyche of a boy

forsaken for his father’s toy,

dream, rest.  Took roundabout

lifetime to ravel up & down

that furious steel arc.

Papa went into the dark

before the triumph of its dawn

upsoaring vault over St. Louis;

yet the late film follows the

mammal-forms – waves, hollows –

Eero spread across that Fifties

U.S. gridscape, breathing curves

& ribs so delicately

bearing gravity

they lift the heart out of its grooves

                  *

toward self-transcending levity –

high tensile alcoves

where swirly flocks of doves

shape octave-looping solidarity –

a wider vista of the whole

concordant cosmic good –

a brother & sisterhood

of green, rose red & lilac soul.

Her intricate diamond quipu knot

rays out in six directions.

An acorn salience,

an Oklahoma holm-oak plot.

An atom from a honey-bole.

A seed rooted in sky.

(Suzuki harmony

sounds deep Hiroshima bell-toll.)

Wayfaring Eric, leftover grandson

remembers his abandoned

mother, at the end

of the reel.  Displaced... the unknown

child.  Sculptor of turtleshell

glide-shelters... curling

strands of hair, unfurling

chords of clay (who softly swells

a lightweight matrix).  Tender tower

of color, glowing through

the fading film of you

& me... green mound, light-freckled bower.

9.27.17