10.29.2019

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

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