looking out a window

HER STATUE

I’m getting older, while the day’s

becoming lighter.  As

in Mary Gould’s last

watercolor (Bardsey Island, Wales) –

looking out a window from brown shade

of cave-like room, toward

April greensward.

Frail hand... pale grass, overlaid

with stone outcrop... old walls, old cross

(Romano-Celtic maze).

Delicate spring promise

from an ancient vault (Natasha’s

limping that way now, with me).

Her temple’s labyrinth –

sea-goddess, Amaranth –

only a sheep-door, west of Galilee;

only this frozen winterworld

all thatched with foot-

prints (near that ice-hut

where Henry’s burr-man hurled

like a cedar waxwing to mistaken ice).

Crabapple food for golden

beaks... spiritual gates, folding

for abject mortals (Minnesota nice)

into a paper bird from Paris, maybe –

Apollinaire’s turban

or Marianne’s tricorn

mayhap – dancing a crane-dance (starry

                    *

sacrifice) with shuttle-pagination.

Ariadne on the golden floor

rhyming with Morning Star

east of Cahokia – her crown of corn

lifting like Liberty (or Spirit

of St. Louis) for a

constellation (Columbia) –

gray-winged Jonah of an old planet

molting to Thunderbird out of the new.

Each Troy-town so will show

her Julia, Iulus, Juno –

or Sophie, prancing here and now

across the parapet of innocence

like dew upon the brow

of childhood’s rainbow –

O bright helm of human sentience!

Behold a Union, fused in fire & light

of soul-transfiguration –

future-human-nation

people, ever-living, stony-bright!

You see that Gate as through an old

& shady window, in a bed-

sit somewhere (in the Hebrides?).

Old stones, light green, grass-emerald...

sprung out of the eternal vault

like Livingstone out of jungle,

where fiery spirits mingle

in a playful dance... – her statue, Walt!

12.27.17

quiet end of the year

LOVE’S CAVERN

At the quiet end of the year,

among the barn smells

a chilly infant wails –

a refugee.  Shepherds draw near.

He is king.  His mother is

queen.  His father is

a mule-driver (was,

anyway) – Vietnamese,

I think?  They live in Egypt now.

They’ve never seen Ghiberti’s

Gates of Paradise –

that brazen lava overflow

to metamorphoses of fiery dream

and rock – sedimentary,

igneous, flickery...

roiling sun to spring, upstream;

they’ve never been to Providence

or heard the Rose Ensemble

whose violas tremble

with harmonious transience...

they live the poverty of innocence.

Light flickers in a manger.

Someone senses danger –

cows murmur, chickens grow tense...

enormous shadows of the monster-men

leer over flesh & blood.

It is the shadow of the rude

star burning in the last heaven

                  *

– the red star, bringing rectitude

out of the mild mien

of that child-man –

incarnate stony magnitude

heavy past sullen measurements

of every swollen tinpot

despot in his chariot.

Matrix of cosmic elements –

the figure of a man emerges,

burning in brazen tongs

and glossolalia of tongues

from every tribe.  Sea surges

multitudinous, incarnadine...

Ocean called universe

forging one verse

with arches (catenary, almondine).

So combers crested in a tower –

moonbright Witch’s Hat

tenting her desolate

oak-limbs (snowy owl’s bower).

Quetzalcoatl, brazen serpent,

lift each refugee of time

into your feathered rhyme

of flame.  Your flicker-tongue, sent

dancing into each soul’s paradigm –

the sparkling river, bent

back to its fundament;

Love’s cavern, salting every lime.

12.23.17

digging in the dirty green

AYE-AYE

The dirty green of the dollar bill.

Gardener George, earwigged

on one side (with a big

little Mona Lisa smile).

The eye over the pyramid (annuit

coeptis) on the other.

Levitating, mother!

Mammon, touching his limit –

a gilded pharaoh, forced to step

sideways (into the river-

sand).  Busy beaver

out of Illinois might be princeps

round here (nobody knows

til all the votes are counted).

We are all the Lord’s anointed

Preacher-Judge (siege perilous)

leers in the face of b-flat storm –

Cordelia, ascend

your throne, bend

everyone to teeming agape (love’s form).

The government shall be upon

his shoulder (right to left)

until the desolate bereft

& greedy soul relents – a human

Imogen emerges, lowly

& victorious.

Dancing the periplus

of Arg-Noah (144, aye-aye).

12.12.17

Traverse des Sioux

LITTLE CROW

Down by the Minnesota River

choked with fertilizer –

shallow brown water of

Traverse des Sioux.  It was here

the white man stole the territory

with treaty signed in smoke

(fake handshake, mock

friendship).  We didn’t mean it – sorry.

Eleven years later (1862)

starved, dispossessed

the scar broke open (led

by blue, reluctant Little Crow).

Extermination of the buffalo

echoed the reservation

camp.  To build a nation

all these savages must go.

The lightweight arc of birch canoe

is like an eyebrow (wingbone

frame, sutured to one

Rose Island – lamp of Manitou).

We’re limping back to Providence.

The whole grotesquerie

of violence & perfidy

to be forgone (washed in the silence

of the sea).  Down Mississippi way

you feel a salty shell wash

through fingers... an eyelash

leach one tear, slowly.  Hey ey.

12.11.17

part of a panorama

FLAT RIVER

You want to understand the metaphysical basis

of these innumerable poems-

après-poems.  Sherlock Holmes

might just as well (go home).  Faces

crowd the apparitions – bow

wet black petals

into wreath-portals;

Nile barge (or Venice funeral-scow).

Sometimes the dishwasher breaks down (just now).

Anton Gàg died young.

Paint fumes (bad lung) –

Bohemian lifestyle in New Ulm (& how

his seven kids survived, I dunno).

Painted Dakota braves

advance through dry sheaves

hungry for ground (1862)...

We’re part of a panorama, Melody;

some Mendelssohn concerto

swelling to tomorrow...

Nature renewed by grace (slow psalmody).

The flat river was calm today.

The bridge craned upward

in a mirror, downward.

Man & God in Maggie’s puffer, aye.

Aunt May (out of Glasgow) beset

my father (John Douglas)

with needless trials, alas;

the ship of faith already left the port.

12.2.17