4.04.2018

for Martin Luther King




DEEP SPRING
          for Martin Luther King

Late April snow.  A blinding white
50 years after Lorraine
Motel.  Memphis, again.
River-Land, seeking an Ocean State.

Rich port-of-call – the 51st, maybe?
Lost Black Sea pebble,
gray whale in trouble
(silent in the silence).  Who is she?

Grace filters into Providence
through stubborn darkness.
Rose Island light – less
diamond than dawn translucence –

only a signal for a wayward eye.
A Chartres chart, or maze
from Notre Dame (haze
mollifies her frozen sky).

The sleepwalkers smolder through smoke-
machines.  Father & son,
their colder war passed on –
unfriendly history (life’s but a joke).

Still roses bloom, in Galilee –
galactic Okean
become a local pond;
folksinging Nazir calling me

to dance, & calling you as well.
Deep spring’s Unknowability
leaps into charity –
a little Noah-boat skims out of hell.

4.4.18


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