8.08.2019

photo from Ballets Russes




ALMOND ARGO

Old Hobo-&-Henry, down by Big Muddy.
Hobo lounges in cottonwood shade.
Twirls a bright curving blade
of tiger-lily, so orange & black, idly

between finger & thumb.  Henry
thought of mossy Giuliana
walking away from her pottery
shop, entering the gloom of Sant’Apollinari

high frieze of majestic virgin martyrs
carrying their crowns.
The photo from Ballets Russes,
Paris, 1913 – spring maids, en fleurs...

& the black dot of Juliet in the distance
crossing the tensile spine 
of orange tiger-dragon
one last time (beneath frost-cobalt silence).

Strange oak, epileptic, near the shore.
Bent like a lyre before
a cluster of cottonwoods – your
humble servant, it seems.  Kingly no more.

Hobo eyed it.  Washing their leaves
with hers, maybe, he said.
Like San Francesco & his bride,
his sister, Povertà.  Humility cleaves

to the pivot of this world, the matrix –
to the crossroad, to the tree
of life.  I look into you, Henri –
to your salty heart.  I read the asterisk

                        *

you scribble for a star, approximately –
I scan the fresco-sketch
you offer for a spirit-potlatch
replica of New World Galilee.  It’s funny.

Earth is in its birth-pang death-throes,
Hobo.  Hope is hard to find.
Yet... the kingdom’s in your mind.
Your heart, my friend.  The Shadow knows.

& you were right to shape the Southern Cross
surrounded by Sydney fig trees
into a diamond-figure Paradise –
to stem four rivers from St. Louis

like emerald casket for the Eucharist;
for Micòl in her black canoe
& MLK in Memphis too
sustain that central martyrdom of Mars

just as Dante foresaw, in his basilica
where little sylvan J
circumferences her almond tree
delightfully... & the grail of tears (Ephphatha)

opens broken hearts across the globe
to each one’s almond Argo
Isis-eyed Hagia Sophia...
see, Henry Church?  & like a strobe

light suddenly unfolded, Henry felt
what Osip felt – accompanied
the rapture of the universe (sighed
with bold Marian... watched iron melt).

8.8.19

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