WINDY CURRENT
They found a body in the broken ice
upstream from Franklin Bridge.
Nearby, JB leapt the edge
50 Epiphanies ago. Minnesota Nice
reminder of mortality, this cold
Ash Wednesday. & who
shall rescue me from this
body of death? You, Lord?
Let each one find you, mighty to save.
My own keeled-over Mardi Gras
diversions end Mid-Barataria.
O rheumy battery of barratry – behave!
Half-sunk, in debt to fraud… Old Ironsides,
our near-abandoned Constitution
drifts toward Mars Lagoon –
graveyard of hulking Liberties, Columbias…
I heard Brad Barth, & maybe Latrobe
have shaped a mini-Mississippi
en masse. Delta recovery
with restoration of the entire globe
– at 1/65th scale, using simulated sand –
in view. Musk-earthy angel
of Odetta, oversing y’all
sluiceways – my diversions too; your hand
stroking the banjo-strings, your voice…
one grain of sand.
Let not Pharaoh’s demand
deter you from your bitter cross
*
– a better choice, for man nor woman
noir nor blank, there be nought
but this flashing pivot –
fiery chariot, all-bearing, San Franciscan
stigma tattoo – all-loving happy ghost
& live-oak everlasting shade
reconciling all things made
& unmade (windy current, whirling host).
Water currents, pressure & flow
(scale-model of congregated
clover coracle, 200’ x 70’)
up to the Chapel of Eternal Now.
You just want to get in & start playing
with it. We can (she sings)
no longer accomplish things
by damming things off. What saying,
Great Spirit? Hwæt? There was silence
for about six hours
(prelude to thunderblast)
when ailing Alighieri, heart gone quiet as
a babe, asleep upon her mother’s breast
gazed up into the rainbow dome
at Sant’Apollinare. You come
to me gliding, from Sabbath rest
in your almond canoe, Jessie-Jesu…
out of the gemstone casket
where 4 streams exit
like the Nile, from Ethiopia… O Hallelu.
2.26.20
from G. Ronald Murphy, S.J., Gemstone of Paradise, p. 187
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