7.17.2018

stone, water, light, fire




DOUBLE RING

The agitations of a stone thrown in the stream
make ripples that become
a smooth continuum
of moving wheels.  One Gothic beam

draws light through stone and water –
blending elements
into high bafflements
of rainbow glass, mind with nature

beyond nature, reason with wonder.
Agnes – her exacting threads
trace Ariadne’s leads
through wilderness of sea & thunder.

Grant – his strange & strict constructions
spin a decussated
dream landscape – fated
black dirt looming beneath confections

of late sunset West Branch foliage.
Why, then, this mirage
of images?  The poet’s rage
wells from embodied fury – & her voice

– Arachne’s, Ariadne’s – is mortal
as that scar-calendar
of dread Coatlicue
unsnagged by force from Mexican corral.

Her poem is cast-iron Poseidon-net
straight from the furnace,
thus : a human face
veiled by the smoke of calumet

                     *

morphing brute fraudulence to peace,
transmuting blank white
voids to violet
& moss-green habitats of paradise.

St. Maximus Confessor, musing
monk, articulated
in theory what unfolded
in reality – fusion of divine choosing

with human liberty in understanding,
in enactment, as the spirit
moves us : radiant
tangle of wheels into a double ring.

All spokes are joined there, in the personal –
as in a room near Golgotha
babble turned glossolalia
& tongues aflame lit one bright coronal.

The poet chants out of that mental fire
& dances like a Nazirite
her intellectual delight
inviting you & me to join the choir

around that altar of a rolling stone –
a living hearth-fire
of the Earth’s desire
for equilibrium, once we throw down

the Minotaur lodged in our hearts.
Malevolent violence & lust
& greed for dominance must
be renounced... & so the dancing starts.

7.17.18

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