& Miriam will dance

DRIED SAP

You can sense the salient resistance

of this old Norway pine

like a mast from Lebanon

in each crust of dried sap.  Straightness

of its upright stance.  Simplicity

of sea-green yearning

toward such bright-swelling

moon… half-dollar of Apollo mission (JFK

smile).  Our SUPERMOON, shedding a silver

reminiscence of sunshine

across crepuscular decline.

Rippling resistance.  What we were

reversing what we are (black sun

of trumped-up emperors

gnawing like rodent-raptors

at the heartwood of the law – treason).

The Song of Miriam, the hymn of exodus

out of the red waters

red white & blue tatters

your sister-dove murmured… passed over us.

My penny in the well, my dark reverberant

exile – the king of Israel

Melchizedek his trial

in Memphis, by the muddy Nile (our

hierophant).  Somehow the 4th of Set

rainbows a seventh 4th

& Juliet comes forth

& Miriam will dance (a Jubilee grande fête).

4.7.20

on the 3rd of July

DREAM-WORK

On the 3rd of July, looking out of this

rain-soaked gazebo into

the yard, I’d like you,

cameradi, to digest my curious

thesis.  Because every moment is a choice

on an axle of light and dark,

& who knows?  Some dream-work

might lead a soul to Paradise.

Out of the Iron Age of infantile aggression

where malign honchos rule

by gun; out of the school

of bully shocks & clinical repression

locked tight by rapacity & fraud;

out of the surly tank parade

Czar Minotaur has made

his own amazement... into the wide

milk-meadows of a Golden Age.

But you have to recognize –

these lightning-bug sparklers

kids wave over mosquito grass image

some more graceful & inexplicable

coherence.  Someone breathing

nearby, in your ear.  A thing

beyond abstraction... elementary table

of an I AM dream-cosmos.  Someone – 

Brother?  Sister?  Mary?

– calling you by name.  See?

Here.  Hearth-dance of Daniel.  Be reborn.

7.3.19

toward the 4th of Juliette

DOUBLE WHEELS

Lone robin yodeling his evening threnody

plaintive, solitary

on June’s last day

what would he intimate to me?

That summer was immense & infinite

beyond the figuring

of our (almost) unerring

memory of planetary things.  That what

our dreaming signified was plain

(glory beyond our ken).

Tomorrow’s now & then

only a ghost might fold again

into the origami of a labyrinth

of Chartres granite, Mary

blue – like this contrary

stubborn root, trapped in cement

blooming, bleu Ming, nevertheless

along an Ariadne thread

signed (calligraphy by Ted

the Mason) in a matrix of finesse

by its ineffable Makar (aye

laddie, on a tear

shed from everywhere –

like Ocean River, or the Milky Way)

& the stone drones below human hearing

it rhythmous b-flat bass

someplace in Memphis

where Osiris met his fate, shearing

                     *

Love from its neverending source

(like Jackie K’s wing

saddled to her hat thing

flying off convertible, in Dallas).

Was it a Lincoln?  Was it a star

mobile, from galaxy?

Something moving in the clay

rotates like Ezekiel wheels – where

Louis Armstrong melted to el P

& X marked the spot

(Montale’s really not

at home – it’s Giorgio who has the key

to the garage, muttered the lovely

Michal of Ferrara dunes).

We don’t recall these tunes!

Ecclesia et Synagoga cousins be –

double-wheels within wheels, sez

Zeke, in Minneapolis.

Where Juliet was, once

before she lost face... fell from grace...

– how tender floats the human form,

ephemeral!  Until

we knot yon safety spiel –

until that lightning robin find his worm

& like a Caliban, or Jordan weed

begin to mold the clay

into slow-moving roundelay

(American)... Cahokia high meed.

7.2.19

only Osage land

WHAT SMILE

July... all the baby flags.

Every bright young lamb

tuck to torment in Vietnam.

Lyndon moon-face – how it sags.

Hubris... alien, demonic force

unhinged from humility

(vomitgreen parrot pity).

Folds bomber-wings in remorse

after all.  Neither national

nor international;

only irrational

(November’s double coronal).

I’ll finish off this work in progress

now, Columbia –

OK?  Oklahoma’s

only Osage land (but I digress).

& poetry?  Is just a conversation

among singed beans.

You joint it, Henrythin,

to ease U-Haul into elation

(somehow).  That OK.  The heart

is made of meleki limestone

(royal).  43 lamps shine

down upon them groove.  What

now, Henry?  What hum?  What ghost

flit as yum turtledove

‘bove fry Friday pirate cove?

What smile lightum up (coruscant host)?

7.1.18

American Dream

True to form, ol' Henrah keeps doin' whatever the heck he's doin'.  Finishing up another chapter (#3) in his latest irrepressible yawp - that is, Ravenna Diagram.  Just in in time for the 4th of July.

AMERICAN DREAM

The flag, lacquered with encaustic

in Greenville, S.C. –

like a sand story

in Queensland, or mosaic patchwork

quilt (outside Ravenna, OH).

Her palm inscribes a circle

as she chuckles out the tale.

We Walbiri live on the ground.  So

dry in California – only

the Bridge keeps orange in

her shroud, Florence (thrown

into fishnet soon, my little tree).

Love is the criterion.

Your only manly mistake

was pride – it is to take

power as entitlement, my son.

E pluribus unum – tears fall

as rain from Manitou,

Black Elk whistles.  You

see the Mandan dancing – Jubilee

a joint venture, people.  American

Dream.  Not to be tarnished

by malice, nor the fish-

mash fables of the shellfish.  Someone

turtles through the brazen image...

flutes across my tables

of thanksgiving.  Seven Gables?

Stephen’s Gate?  Iris, in sage.

 7.4.15

Flag on Orange Field, Jasper Johns

Bookends, fireworks

Finished book-length yodel Lanthanum 3 years ago today.  Here is the final entry for that.  4th of July something of a hinge for my poems.  The Coming-Forth-of-Julie.  Explosions in the hinterland.