CLEAR PINE
Hobo was playing solo crane bone flute
like an airy trompette marine
as he watched Henry puzzle on,
muttering his thumpy rhythms en route.
It’s the Union, the Union, Hobo intoned –
as your eye is clear & light
in the pasture breeze – right?
We wrestle with this violence, shark-boned
with vicious avarice – yet Sophie-gentleness
may rule at last, a restoration
of your soul’s volition –
the true child-wish, mild & harmonious
as that lamb-lily in the tiger’s eye;
as Sophie plays her middle Cs
at center of the keys
& swings all 88 into the sapphire sky.
Hope is our natural state – for a grace
bestowed, unbeknownst to us.
Lost & found – like that Tombs
Angel, swimming from the marble face
to lift a prisoner out of the dust –
Rebecca Salome Foster, spun
by Bitter-Lamb into the sun;
drawn out again (by Jeremy Ann) at last...
So Henry clutched the muddy wheel
& turned it, counter-clockwise;
from oceanic Providence
to clear pine river-source... you feel
*
it turning, turning... into San Francisco
& a rainbow pigeon-throat
blent with rainbow trout
all natural wonders for that footloose hobo
full of ecstatic spiritual deliverance
marked on his feet & palms
from walking, chanting psalms
all the way to the Delta – joyeux entrance
into azure Gulf, American trumpets
O when the saints
come marching in...
& the clay wheel turns bronze serpents
into flame-gold lambs, whose linking thread
folds limbs into a March on Washington :
where they will wash away corruption
& the violence greed breeds – the dead
shall climb up from their graves, & dance
the Beguine – the beginning again;
the restoration of all men & women
in the clay river-light of Cahokia’s immense
plateau – across Big Muddy from the sky-
blue angle of the Gateway Arch –
that silvery canoe, echoing the arc
of one invisible & omnipresent loving eye :
Aye-Aye of Providence. Elliptical wafer
lifted from humble bowl...
Hagia Sophia (universal
soul) wearing her limestone life-saver.
8.9.19
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