with Grace (in memory)

MANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATION

                  i.m. Grace Tagliabue (1922-2018)

In that heavenly kingdom of Como, or Maine,

his ready bird-feather

will already be there

with you, Grace – to bring peace, to make plain

the origin of the Cosmos in love & joy –

his valiant light-heart

casting out fear with an art

like child’s play.  & you (his chief toy,

rest, dream) would be there, too –

answering love with love

from the deep, from above,

tracing that birdsong in robin’s egg blue

& loops of moss-green watercolor.

Since poetry – imagination –

is manuscript illumination,

you chose to let John’s words flower

like parchment flesh in a bath of rebirth –

& as time slowly waltzes us

toward our last contra dances

you help wash our feet on Earth

& ready us for that elfin circle-dance

in the kingdom of children &

animals & grains of sand

all sparkling in the galaxies... entrancing

Entrance to Eternity (your linen

wheel of emerald palm-

prints... infant calm

babble of Phoebe)... heaven’s amen, amen.

    with grace, from Grace, by grace 

                                3.29.18

the Ides of March in its idea

DOUBLE-BIND

That brilliant peacock-feathered eagle

Joachim fingerpainted

on parchment (ancient

plummet out of Calabrian ingle-

cave) figured the Holy Ghost –

monarch of the air,

white-haired regal raptor

rapt to avenge every Tuscan boast.

I marvel at the prestidigitation

of the priestly mind –

the Akeda, a double-bind,

knotting its pivotal vocation

under the shadow of those gilded wings...

that mountebank YHWH

in his coyote way

the widerruf of pyramidal things.

Folktales & myths were a defense.

Mechanism of the nurse

to lullaby the curse

& soothe the children in their tents...

they builded better than they knew.

The king is dead, long

live the king.  Bong

sounds the gong – old Caesar’s through.

Absolute control is crumbling.

Even now, the axe

is laid to the root... don’t

ask.  Meek Joachim is mumbling.

3.15.18

speech after long silence

DARK MATTER

On Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”

(bronze doors of Alighieri’s

Baptistery) mute eyes

read open palms as messages –

clouds’ condensation (mist & spray)

solidifies in glints

of angels’ footprints.

Cerements & shrouds (all hands... away).

Sauntering winter by the river

leaves only this ladder

of snow – bronze adder,

subterranean shiver (moon-silver).

Anonymous Zaccheus of Topsfield

fined for making friends

with Indians &

Quakers (150 years ground

on, before the Revolution

bent the tune).  We are

the salt within the Rio

del Espiritu Santo (many thousand

gone).  We are the Lenten corn

in a maze of amnesia

to the horizon (hallelujah).

Old Hole-in-the-Sky – buffalo-shorn

tepee – pyramid cathedral, aye.

Dark matter between Bear

& Lyre; grey mother,

Jonah’s poncho (oaken sigh).

3.12.18