May Goulding at her Negus launch

UNFOLDING SHEEP

So the double wheels of the Venn diagram

(a kind of astigmatism from

from Ravenna to home)

mesh in a translated spacetime –

East to West become Rome-Byzantium

Greek to Italian Catholic

Orthodox – majestic

Chartres to homespun NOLA Notre Dame.

I’m working on a bridge, sez Hobo.

Under that nature morte

(Peto, Brown Decades) – what

the flower of liberty became... oh no.

The lilies on the funeral train

(Gould was an engineer).

Abe Lincoln’s here –

great Julius Caesar’s ghastly coin

(one lethal copper penny).

The wheel slowly revolves.

Agony gradually resolves.

The quiet sepulcher (Gesthemane)

became a bargaining chip at the Crusades.

What molts the World-Ruler

from Ides of March to your

sweat-April soul-showers (the blade’s

Excalibur) is some indomitable eagle-

heart – bald as the snowfields

north of International Falls,

wide as the river south of Angola.

                    *

You mark the justice of the refugee,

the accurate perception

of the slave.  Moses-pontoon

or old Italian canoe... it’s simply

the humble carpenter’s sharp eye

encapsulated in a bead

of honey (life’s high meed) –

gold oval of air, its quiddity.

Like throne of Isis in West Branch,

or Grant Wood making space

for Herbie Hoover’s birthplace –

like May Goulding at her Negus launch

(a cup of ceremony from deep

Ethiopia) for Henry Flower –

blooming nom-de-plume, your

lambent, flammable, unfolding sheep.

Rhode Island waits for you,

Son of the Evening Star;

little acorn-czar,

your birthday rhymes with Manitou –

palladium of shimmering mosaic

merging with river-clay

to meet Oak-Apple Day

for restoration (JFK).  A wake, awake!

It’s Rooster Henry, dusting off

the grave.  It’s everyone

thinking the train’s long gone –

finding an acorn in a hollow trough.

3.3.19