disenchantment of the sacred wood

 SECOND CHILDHOOD

This is that ancient harvest night.

Hobo curls deep into his nest

of old leaves, with his ghost

of a motherland... everything all right.

The Middle Ages were a second childhood

for homesick gentlemen, broken

by the gears of modern men –

the disenchantment of the sacred wood.

That light-filled limestone in the towns

offered to Mary Theotokos...

or the tart fervor of François

Villon!  Guild banners, pennants, clergy gowns

blazed with a commonality belied

by profiles of sad Synagoga,

goad for theological amnesia.

Her crown askew, her flock must hide.

Mum Quaker Hobo snores now

in a pile of aspen leaves.

Canada poplar sheaves,

he mumbles, to a sunflower (somehow).

She’s Pando in Italian, he dreams.

Largest clone colony

below the surface... maybe

the universe.  A raven-glance beams

at prow of her canoe, slips by.

Your motherland is endless,

someone whispers.  So this mass

of dead leaves limns one breathing aye.

                                                            10.31.19

Thunderbird already there

LIVID GRAIL

Late October evening.  Minnesota.

The sky already blue-black,

midnight blue.  Dim speck

of starshine, here & there.  The Hiawatha

sped from Chicago north, May 29

(1935).  Heavy freight train

hobbling across the iron

span, now – screeching, chirping (mine).

Peto, Reminiscences of 1865.

Those mystic chords of memory...

someone to end the enmity

with eloquence (while he was still alive,

and after).  Summon our humanity

into the web of mutuality –

where rootless irrationality

might lose its sway (so hope we).

These chords align their intervals,

octagonal resemblances.

Out of a salty sibilance,

an ocean-sigh (when sea-bell tolls) –

one heave of molten planetary heart

whose Jonah waits, to rise again

out of the chambers of Leviathan

coiling a spring where all the rivers start.

The prehistoric limestone streams

ply on ply, like Schifanoia

allegories in Ferrara –

irenic fossilized life-forms

                 *

of some St. Vitus dance, before all wars;

here a spiral clover-shell

& here an almond eye

gazing from hell up to those stars

with a perennial fidelity.

Maybe it was your canoe,

Micòl – breaching anew

through stinging surf of grief & joy;

for that amor who is always in advance,

arriving before you know

like an eye-in-hand, so –

molded like your clay flute-radiance,

the little bird who sings out of the kiln.

Coulombe, coulombe,

she coos her name –

so simple, waiting at the windowsill;

out of the fire & burning palms

like Phoenix from her tomb

a new America (coulombe,

coulombe) this livid grail exhumes –

ghost dance of the dove who came before

of Thunderbird-already-there

through the black night air

from the dancing bear – shady amor

framing with shimmering wave-wings

milky Melchizedek

& bright ginger Jack

& gentle Abraham (grail-splicing springs).

10.29.19

a thing a thane might ship

MUDDY WINDVANE

The muted pleading of the cottonwoods

meshed in a counterpoint

with myriad redundant

autumn leaves (Chet Baker, Miles).

Sorrow & joy, sickness & health

in a subtle weave of shocks

& echoes (mental blocks

were mystic chords once, Keith).

Beneath your penumbra, Alighieri –

a shadow pantomime.

Fleeting Ravenna rhyme

(Julie on the swing set, Henry

sailing from the limb, laughing).

The logic of your enigmatic

kerygma, then, epileptic

showman?  Merely a line curving

across historical time, into the light

emanating from your heart,

Galilean nazir-sport –

over a chessboard made of night

& day, an abba-rhyme pattern

(pax-bellum-pax, or king-

usurpavenger-prince... a thing

a thane might ship, a Grecian urn).

Bent overlords still shadowbox

musical echoes in refrain.

Mendelssohn leaf-rain

leads me back to Mirror Lakes

                   *

– twin lakes, twin mirrors (eyes

of Oedipus, Antigone) –

Twin Cities ceremony

curing the incest-curse (of Paradise).

You cannot have a child of gods

& men.  Like an albino

freak, or Minotaur

the twin will upset planting periods

& hunting prayers.  The High Priest

tears his robe.  He

says he is the One – he,

he!  Messiah-singularity (least

shall be greatest, last first).  Huh?

Henry earn him tragedy –

dumb spiral out of clay

turn muddy windvane of Columbia.

All about people you know, poetry.

Little Rhody, see –

Rog Williams, Tommy

Gould (Annie Hutchinson too, sadly) –

plumb from Sir Edward Coke

into self-government

by way of Charlie Second

(seedling restoration, kingdom oak)...

til little Providence become

a way of life (like yesterday)

& you reckon the penumbra

yon Lady of the Harbor harbors (hum)

10.28.19

where the wheel pivots

VIA FRANCIGENA

My path of J, my Via Francigena.

You can read it on the Q-

line train, between St. Lou

& Monk’s Mound (clay Cahokia).

Choo-choo, J-J, Joanna, Giuliana...

on the milk train way,

your dewy morning ray –

autumnal hoot of helmeted Athena

(hooya-hey).  Fled with her child

from rude dragon.  Nightmare

tyranny (unveiling there

the root of human woe).  So the scald

burns his tattoo into each trumpet call –

the empty mirror of the king

crowns him equal to everything.

So gather him weird into your iris squall,

milky Sophia – gold sunflower

stretched into an almond

ark of mustard limbs (wand

blooming with abject surrender).

Because I love, because I love...

Behold, my child, I have

no wrath.  & in the hive

of clay lips, trace her architrave –

tacit surrender to a violet

sown by storm (below

these wars of villain & hero).

Where the wheel pivots, my river-pilot.

10.26.19

her quantum realm

FLIGHT-PATTERN

Hobo retreats to his park bench

on the riverbank... who

he?  The other half of you –

half-man, insufficient mensch

acquainted with the missing hole

of all deracinated souls.

The fever-men, the moles

in Washington... hungry for the dole

of glitz & lucre, hypocritical revenge

for Cain (vain little men

seeking glory in ruin).

Like a swift & mauvais rêve-songe

baseless as those trumped-up towers

Hobo trips his execrable

ghost-dance parable –

a travesty, to fill last hours

verily unto their scarlet brim.

He sees her, off in the distance

beyond the iron bridge.  Trance-

vision of that Liberty (Wisdom)

triumphant in her harbor... crown

upon her brow, torch lifted

overhead, arm hugging tablet

of the law.  Her quantum realm (unknown

Coatliqubits of soul-restoration)

rotates the clay wheel

on its Gateway oracle –

fright transformed into flight-pattern.

10.24.19

Hamlet in the death-canoe

SCARLET WAX

The dreamer, mapping a circling cosmos

of milk & honey, starlight

& sweet fire... like Brightman’s

integral Person – with tables of Moses

in their cedary bark of mutual promise

lending salty substance

to halting hesitance

of reason (while the heart says yes).

The dreamer assembles the disparate realms

into crescendo-tango.

Hamlet in the death-canoe,

precipitous peripeteia – helm’s

Charon-pilot, planting the scarlet wax

of his father’s dread seal

for a doom they must feel

anon (political axe prickling their necks).

The tables of the covenant

written on our hearts –

sine-waves where channel parts,

Osiris-Jonah reassembled (US to haunt).

Old Ironsides, your canny constitution

oxidizes under termite siege.

The man of lawlessness will wage

perverse destruction like a weathervane

cut loose... yet that rust-bound ship

still bends toward Providence –

native Thanksgiving-sense,

red-corn grasshop (at clipper clip).

10.23.19

one mustard spark

RAINBOW MOUTH

The splendor of dangling catenary arcs

of orange steel & azure

sparkling with slim sure

stride, sprinting beyond the bayside parks.

I saw you, iridescent Golden Gate

on a sunny day in 1974.

Where Juliet had gone before,

plunged into her absence... my jeune Fate.

These tears in the inescapable network

of mutuality, these tears

of things.  What heart bears

at eye of hurricane (one mustard spark).

In the still, small world, along the keel

of a trim equilibrium skims

love’s unconditional hum

of humble surrender.  Like a simple meal.

Like a mother or father who is always there

ahead of time, before

you are aware.  Will soar

with eagles & doves, your Aviator-

Mediator – volant-violet Adonis, lifted up

(beyond the rivalry of red

& blue) into the thunderhead

of Thunderbird (Jonah grail-cup).

Hum now, Evening Star, Columbia...

your rainbow mouth, Osiris-

child.  Over the crisis-

cradle, full of infant cries – la realtà.

10.22.19

Minnesota Mining & Meditation

BRASS COIL

Among the North American tribes

Ojibwe midéwé medicine

was considered, bar none

dark & strong.  Copper for earlobes,

iron for arrowheads.  The beetling sky

barreled down over tamaracks

as wind made tracks

disappear in shifty drifts... hey ey

yo, winter raven!  Iron mother-bird.

Little Henry Limp

climbed out of the stump

of his papa’s grave (obsequious word,

weaker than puff of cottonwood).

Up there in Rez Cemetery

overlooking Mississippi –

him foolish-fond Ski-Neighborhood,

him dream-nest, reconciling every pain.

Down below on the floodplain

wimpy Abel, mean Cain

wrassled for the gilded unclean

scepter of dominion – going insane;

in that negative snow-light

your abject, self-abasing wight

is king of the weak, the outcast, in his rain.

& who shall have the succession, lil Hamlet?

The brass coil Vengeance

around your wrist, the dance

of California, D.C.... where’d my safety net?

10.21.19

ineffable seraph of the boomerang

BOOMERANG-SPUN

Love is the curving frame of things,

the flexible woven logos

of the safety net – bamboo’s

swerving embrace the sculptor brings

to public squares in São Paulo

(Alison Grace Martin).

Thus, in Pushkin & Scriabin

Mandelstam spoke of an eternal ritorno

fresco’d in the alcove of Redemption –

earth already redeemed

& art set free, beamed

through spirit-webs (boomerang-spun)

                       *

until the world becomes a nest or den

prefigured in those icons

limned for all seasons (our

pre-existent & imaginary friend

who nevertheless walks upright, smiles

& calls us by our name).

The rays through the cranium,

holes in the hands... Earth’s exiles

sense the time-scent of eternal ends.

& so the sign of humble dignity’s

grandfathered to eternity –

the nest feathered with wings, my friends.

10.17.19

season of myths

AUDACIOUS FRIGATE

Yearnful melancholy Hobo ambles

through the cool autumn air

beside his ancient river.

The stately ship is in shambles –

audacious frigate, Ironsides;

the man of lawlessness

fills sails with loopholes,

fraud & force cloaked in bromides.

The mellow colors by the Mississippi

figure a buoyant hearth

where a woman might give birth

amid flame-tongues of domesticity –

like these nests of bold maple leaves

mingled with cadaverous hearts

of cottonwoods (Hart’s

premonition, Berryman’s Osiris sheaves).

& Henry, patiently delving like a wasp

through its oak-apple shell

or a worm through the skull

of a defunct Lear, will suddenly gasp

like an infant breathing her first air –

where oak-leaves chitter

beneath Roundhead October;

a restoration from crypt-keeper’s lair.

Hobo, following the copper shoreline

bends toward St. Louis

& his bark of Jessie, O.

Light churnagogue (twin trees becoming one).

10.16.19

Cordelia in the wasps' nest

AUTUMN RITE

In the car coming back from the memory unit

I catch the tail end of Mahler’s 9th

the slow slow strings’ fading strength

bent like snarly willow limbs into some resonant

sweet culmination (ancient Mendelssohn

elegy in mind).  Autumn’s

rust-blood golden sun’s

quintessence now, O silent one?

Cordelia in the wasps’ nest, at the axis

of the earth... Lear, trembling

like an oak gall wasp – bleeding,

stung by the crypt-keeper (Euderus

Set).  The wasp within the wasp, Osip –

Shakespeare’s quaint acorn-

crown of happiness (shorn

pharmakon).  & shalt thou drink my cup?

The box-within-a-box, the matryoshka

toy?  Like bloody JFK

in Dallas, on a Friday –

Jackie’s pink tiara (autumn leaf regalia)...

The river of violin sound measures time

to its serene delta, my friend.

& the tree (Hagia Sophia with a million

eyes) harbors the wind like a nursery dome –

you hear the sound of it (that waterfall

through twin cities, Berryman)

but you know not whence (my son)

it comes (oak’s Galla rite, imperial).

10.15.19

beehive hop melds drones

SCRAMBLED EGGS

October in my spindly cedar octagon.

Oblomov in a quaint gazebo

waiting for his Olga, O.

Henry had an MRI today.  Beat.  Ochin.

His mini-RI, his Ocean State,

full of scrambled eggs &

mussels, canonical sand...

some Narragansett raving (will abate).

He can’t lift Juliet (or JB, either)

out of the bitter surf

with a pompous word, a mere

sniff to the wise.  Just take a breather,

Hen.  The heart is a mystery

who can plummet?  Purple

majesty amid all people,

8-ball in the Rabbi Shabbat sea –

where be wisdom be to found, Henri?

In love again with Heidi

or whole neighborhood, ey?

In Mendelssohn, where the bee-

hive hop melds drones to symphony...

where children laugh naturally

& Sophie will skip-to-me-

Lou through the live-oak gateway

immemorial... as toward you, gentes,

Jeannie, Juliet, Jonah,

the heartbeat (Shekinah)

skims near – overshadowy Benny Voluntas.

10.9.19

fireball parody

META-BRIDGE

October Indian summer weather;

delicate red hands

of sumac & maple pause

suspended, swing through clear air.

A white paddlewheeler like a ghost

glides upstream out of

Lethe – like a church dove

burbling an emerald paternost,

a moody coracle out of Iona.

Who is the master here,

O mini Man o’Tar?

Whose maze is this, Grandma?

Nile Voodoo Queen seeks her Osiris

at the snaky rainbow mouth; &

Henry Churnagogue steams south

to find his figurehead (Columbia’s

Joanna-genesis, out of impoverished

Franciscan waters).  These two

reflect each other – so

your spring-coiled safety net’s accomplished.

So when that fireball parody of Icarus

– no guidance system – lands

a direct hit on Ireland’s

intricate dear vessel (Ick-R-Us?

Ich bin ein Russki, then?) our meta-bridge

of bridges, our Iris beyond 

all arks, will respond –

braiding a human chain of love & courage.

10.8.19

driving around Kenwood

BLUE CLAY

Driving around Kenwood, the memories.

In the mist.  October

leaves me almost sober

(maples blushing maroon, umber).  The bees

have mostly flown to sleep (in the calyx

of a sunflower).  You’ll find

soft traces of the mind

in whorls of thumbprints – Red Wing phoenix

lifted out of blue clay & industrial (okay

now what?).  Zone of quiet

emotional measurement.  Whit-

mind, informing each & all.  Today

the Mississippi is a feathered serpent,

mirror of oak & maple,

cottonwood.  Oak-apple

galls the rotund roundhead tyrant –

harboring the charismatic prince

whose mother & bride is

Espiritu Santo, Sophia’s

father & son (green acorn salience).

The canoe downstream is almost invisible

like a pair of wooden lips

whispering across the gaps –

a miniature ark, whose rainbow burble

bubbles back her own Churnagogue wake;

she is the radiant candle

glowing through the cupped hand,

the clay grail mending each American mistake.

10.7.19

keep on pushkin, straight ahead

RED FOX

Under the silver shoreline of late cottonwoods

the quiet gray clouds

the dry river weeds (wounded

with scattered sumac) Hobo broods

as always.  Trying mightily to bring it all

into focus, under the aegis

of an ineffable Isis-

eye (black West Branch granite, under veil).

Seated on her throne, standing for a Mind

of grace.  The poets’ doctrine

as against the matter-men –

lambent clay mutter-shape (FOR BLIND).

Johnny, we hardly knew ye... Iona

clover, twirling like a dervish

in the shadow of an Irish

Tyche.  Liberté, coulombe, Columbia...

Jeanne, Jonah.  Up from pacific waters

of an Ocean Rose, an Okeanos

Newport oakenship – ceremonious

wedding (chaste prow, beyond all wars).

Like scrape of diamond on a coal-black

door.  Marking your graffiti-

passage, Henry Contumely –

he hath entered the realm of signs (alas,

alack).  You search the scriptures, lil Red

Fox – but do not come to ME.

Swift as cottonwood leaf

her sun-heart passes... (Dion-Isis?  Fled.)

10.2.19