chaired in the adamant of Time

WISDOM-BENCH

He was muttering in his sleep the whole time.

Of things seen & unseen,

emblems of earth & heaven – like

a man in his grave, waiting for his bones to rhyme

again.  His friend Hobo came from Ohio

whistling Carl Sandburg tunes,

Vachel Lindsay refrains;

his duds were dusty, raggedy, his health so-so;

he only loved the calm of the constant River

& the wide distant plains

& the ache in his heart.  Pains

of hard living made him smile (it goes on forever).

He himself was an old Yankee man.

Some Quaker dream tilted his mind

to the redemption of a world unkind,

& mad with rage – a providential plan.

The dream came out of West Branch

one fine day – the black marble

of Isis (planted at the Memorial)

a kind of emblem for her Wisdom-Bench

chaired in the adamant of Time, as Walt

declared.  & we are Hagia Sophia

with a million eyes, maybe… a sigh

instilled by otherworldly grace.  A bolt

of lightning from the Thunderbird.  Thus

Wisdom is justified in all her children –

settled on her lap of twinkling obsidian

beneath the steady circling of milky stars.

4.20.20