whispering the news

NESTED BRANCHES

When the Eternal comes, says the Rabbi,

& what does he mean?

May be the Ghost behind the scene;

the tear with grain of Ocean in your eye.

The truth is whole, the truth is one –

& what does this mean?

That Love’s criterion

is rectitude, in every human situation.

Gumilev, that Petersburg poet,

called it chaste vision –

welded like dew at dawn

to blades of grass, the spark of holy Paraclete.

The infant acorn was King of the Wood.

The leaves bent, whispering the news

through Ariadne’s arbor… (hers

the thread – her nested branches overhead).

The Rabbi is a child of God!

cried Mary Magdalen.

He dies on this occasion

since he bears the prophet’s spiral rod

twirling from heaven as from nothingness.

His smile defies your gravitation;

he will come again

after three days of stony sleepiness

like Jonah sprang from salty Milky Way;

the rule of theft & violence,

of Minotaur’s demonic fraudulence

is coming to an end.  Truth shines like day.

4.2.20

like a small town playground

LIGHT GOLD

The restoration of all things…

what’s it about this phrase

corrals my shifty gaze?

Some infant stimulus it brings?

As at the source of vast rivers

(Mississippi, Danube)

a baby spring’s hubbub

purls out of ground… shimmers

in bitter February air & light.

The restoration of a truth

too plain, too clear, to booth

as Peter would (its glare so bright).

Universal constant, Einstein’s measure;

flexible cinch-thread

of muttering light gold

sent to bind man, through rose embrasure.

Power’s byzantine – but truth Franciscan.

Peaceable polity

is founded in equality

chaste as a child’s eye (Petersburgian).

The restoration of the human world

is like a small town playground,

where the rusty sound

of an ancient iron swing is curled

within your inner ear.  You heard it

years ago, once… now,

again.  No one knows how

the goldfinch’s tricolor obsignat.

2.16.20

like that chaste vision

SERPENT-SPINE

Those Tuscan hills he hymned of, once

in rainy Voronezh.

Winter sunshine flashes

over the Mississippi’s muted bronze.

The exile hums of exiles, like a goldfinch

memorizes Europe;

watch her spectrum envelope

a furious alchemy of wingstrokes (inch

by inch).  So the flappable epileptic

witnesses drab depredations

from his almond branch –

Pope, Emperor… a sick

republic, riven by self-seeking men;

yet the silver line of the river

reminds him of forever

after (law of Righteous One).

Roger, with left hand floating

over the empty void

of a Providence hillside,

preaches the liberty of everything

like that chaste vision Nikolai proclaimed

(equalized humble

multitudes of tumble-

down small shining blooms) – & Osip framed;

& the river, like a serpent-spine

glints across graphite winter –

pencil from the hinter-

lands, crust of salty bread & wine.

2.8.20

the sense of being right

GREEN EYE

The sense of being right, said Mandelstam

confronted by the Kremlin

goons.  Gumilev’s vision

of sweet radiance (chaste equilibrium

of morning dew).  The restoration

of all things might not be

some dystopic unreality

but a balancing of earth & heaven –

the way a canoe takes wing downstream

like feathery kayak

or golden bubble-track

across the sky (the Ocean River of your dream).

Kennedy, Jack.  A 4-leaf clover

assassinated every day

along with brother Bobby, &

King, Martin Luther (justice-lover).

A green eye floats, engraved over

the pyramid.  I calibrate

the shifting angles of a late

Atlantis – one heartbroken sky-rover

whose tears will magnify an Iris

in transit, like Venus

(from luxuria to lux

aeternam).  She was born for this –

to be the eye-in-hand of muddy clay

transmitting Jonah to Columbia;

to launch a hallelujah

from Monk’s Mound to D.C. (U.S.A.).

11.17.19

slow boat to Atlantis

archaic Mississippian ware (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

ADAMANT ACORN

The steady quiet of the river leads me,

& these monarchs afloat

toward Mexico.  Mote

of black-orange sail, tacking across a sea

of green... like a jasper flag of Jonah

(flickering calm coral

pinned over equatorial

squall).  Sextant from Alexandria,

sunken Heracleion – lamp from Atlantis

beaming through night sea;

matrix of Milky Way,

your Isis-canoe... assembling Osiris

from slow-roiling flatlands (Mississippian).

So Wolfram’s grail-witness

(ineffable justice

planted in lovingkindness) branches on

through Osip’s, Nikolai’s chaste vision –

adamant acorn of creation

(shining emerald of redemption

framed by buoyant casket-stone).

The red muscle pulses into veins.

A wheel turns versus gravity

rowing time to eternity;

the melancholy of Ravenna cranes,

the mortified forsaken innocence

of flighty Juliet

my filmy safety net

hugs tight – lifts up to cedar salience.

8.29.19

the stubborn Acmeist

AMERICAN THING

The way a stream flows around a piece of granite

rough gray in the water, winking

with rose quartz, mica (splintering).

So the stubborn Acmeist would honor that

which is, that which exists.  & Osip

would agree with Oscar Cullmann

as to the meaning of Redemption –

it’s already happened.  So right worship

is a thing of joy – ample gratitude

for being, & the hope

of Restoration (its full scope

a celebration, braiding bread & wine).  You’d

barely sense the almost-infinitely distant

echoes of a first Thanksgiving...

everyone hoisting something

to that scrawny picnic table (ancient

light).  So as we J-stroke forward

let’s return to New Orleans

with B. Latrobe, who kens

the old French buildings there (mired

in mosquito nets & drainage swamps);

where he will follow his own son

to his malarial grave (one

body, bread & wine).  Under yellow lamps

like fireflies in the harbor (swaying,

soaring).  Scintillant mosaic

for one lugubrious Republic

(hopeful, Creole).  Clay American thing.

8.6.19

beamed into a barn corner

LEVEL PLAIN

When all the structures are dismantled,

the fabulous bright makings

woven by spider-kings

undone, what remains untold?

In Mendelssohn, I handed a dandelion

through the wooden fence

to golden Heidi, once –

old flame of infancy, first Valentine.

Her mop of hair colored like wheat

framing chaste happiness –

Gumilev’s compass,

calm charity for all (transparent,

sweet).  The shadow of the martyrs

like myrtle in the graveyard

darkens, green.  The bard

of America recalls through tears

the gentle captains taken from us

like matryoshka dolls –

god-like mortals

molting in dilapidated silos

like shimmering snowfields of wheat-

crystals.  So their presence

in aromatic silence

weights like ballast of a sea-casket

each holiday – all history

compacted in the oval

trace of one primeval

prophet’s kiss.  O mystery

                *

of your mandorla – crumbling wall!

Like Jonah from the sea

come whispering to me –

dark almond, ministering honey-gall!

Your tiny grain of wheat must die

in the heart of Everywoman,

Everyman... becoming stone;

stone reddened in Rhode Island eye

not purchased by price nor money

but only by love.

So that Liberty-dove

became Columbia, for buried Henry –

Astraea beamed into a barn corner

& Virgo spread her sheaf

of compassionate relief

in a sparkling surf of harvest air.

So your soaring icon in a mandala

hovers over Ravenna;

so Dante’s antenna

transmits in spectral panorama

the rainbow’s interlocking rings

framing that child-king

set upon humbling

all earthly dominion – til everything’s

remolded to a level plain

or playing-field; clay

children romp all day

within your carpentry’s domain.

2.14.19

matrix of the capital

TINY ANCHOR

Charles L’Enfant painted a watercolor

panorama, 14 inches

by 7 feet long, which shows

the Continental Army by the Hudson River

at Verplanck’s Point (1782).

Its curator (Phil Mead)

once noticed what appeared

to be a mini-tepee notched in view –

looking vaguely familiar...

why?  That very canvas

tent (George Washington’s)

was standing in a nearby corner

of his own museum.  From tiny sketches

mighty plants may grow –

L’Enfant would later sow

the plans for D.C.’s marble stretches

(George’s tent of meeting thus

the matrix of the capital).

We are all infants, after all.

Whence comes this rolling wondrous

theatre in the round?  Each regiment

on the accompanying chart

plays its own part –

a seahorse anchor figuring Rhode Island

(Providence for African, Native 

American recruits).

Even Okean has roots –

one sign given, that we might live

                  *

like Jonah (which means turtledove)

descending, by enormous

& galactic routes

from lambent & egalitarian beehive

on high – the very cosmopolitan

& chaste kingdom of God –

chaste, as out of Novgorod

by way of Osip (Mandelstamian)...

Each local soul circles toward Providence

as moth toward firelight.

Only fly right

into the center of her blazing salience –

you’ll see the laws of city & country

meld to conformity

with that great mutuality

Martin proclaimed – God’s wakan charity.

                  *

This lonely river-path of Hobo

down the sky’s time-lapse

touches a key, perhaps.

His mother’s clay is rolling, so;

out of that gray whale’s brow of sadness

flows a solidarity

escried by Raven – see?

Au mer... À Mère I caw (southwest,

southwest)... Cautantowwit, or Noah’s

pilot, feeding crumbs...

deep distant drums

of Thunderbird.  Silence (Cahokia’s).

11.15.17

hurrah for the green black & blue

DREAM SONGS

Early cold air makes light more clear

toward Veteran’s Day.

Only whisper a ray

through the Mexican mirror, my hero (here

& now).  Who gave a last full measure

to the metronome of fate –

her solemn bell drones late

over these midnight hexagons (white hair

of graves).  Whisper it back to me,

quietly, quietly.  Dark

wake of Noah’s Cutty Sark,

trailing to Southern Cross, Black Sea.

Your raven circles to the end of speech.

These crumbs will be enough.

Twin shoulders lift the rough

yoke – walk a path to Ocean Beach.

A stone like diamond lost in Voronezh –

gray pebble, agate

hidden in the gate...

forged fate of Man as Uncle George

the Unknown Soldier... gardener

outside her smithy-cave,

their humus-world to save.

Come in.  These stones weather

Siberian winter – like Finnish sauna

finished in Hyperborea;

out of Lake Victoria

or Sydney, Australia (hurrah

                  *

for the green black & blue)... faint echo

out of Mexico,

where all the monarchs go.

The earth will be redeemed... but very slow.

Up the street from your view of heaven

in another neighborhood

hearts hard for good

pitch darkness toward Pacific Union –

money grooves & spectral hates

congeal in orange ogre-

hats... scared morgue-

hacks... guile of guppy hypocrites...

All politics is local, sez.

In Minneapolis

black is really less

skin in the game (the realtor biz);

up at the lake, the fishermen

cash in their walleyes;

hunters in disguise

carry the venison for Uncle Ben

(Rice Lake).  The joker’s going wild.

He’s up by White Bear –

FBI got there?

Over near Mound – which bullets?  Piled?

Dream songs must leave behind the fear,

greed, hate.  Earth clay is one,

& Manitou is

done (for today).  Help with the bier?

11.9.17

spoke of a water-wheel

SALT WAVE

Along the riverbank, these rich

dark green moss-terraces;

a miniature forest

spreading wide along each niche

of Pliocene sea-limestone.

Archive of mollusc-whorl

& sea-worm spiral

layers of plastered ivory linen.

An infinitely tiny bronze

french horn accompanies

trompette marine – Willie’s

gauzy smoke-signal de Paris;

petrified remains of carven

calumet from Red Wing,

maybe.  This is nothing

like a Pipestone atlatl, Raven

croaks.  Spoke of a water-wheel,

more likely.  Jessie O’s

clay potter swells

with gentle pats & frills – feel

how her spine of Fish-Man surfaces

profound supremacy of whale!

A wheel that will not fail

springs to its trickle-task, washes

the wilderness from every face

until its light-green glory

meshes Ezekiel’s story –

wheel wends with wheel (a carapace

                *

of pearl enfolds that golden bough)

until a plangent joy

beams from unfurling J

in spokes of rose aye-aye lands now –

one Great Red Spot, so thundery

& jovial – one Yahweh-

Manitou, in one streamway –

the Rio del Espiritu, at play

across prairies & meadowlands

in centrifugal fugue –

day-lily orange bugle-

calls, mauvelets a monarch understands –

until at last the torch of Liberty

lifts from her copper shroud

to chant moss-green out loud

& set the Mississippi free...

As when the labyrinth of St. Louis

glimmers wheat-gold amid

deep shade (Monk’s Mound)

– & signs the tidal drone (commence!)

to shift the Earth from fraudulence –

fallacious Midas-usura

whose Minotaur is US-

R-US – whose glow of carbon flatulence

burns orange rage (from White House

into every gilded cage)

& all the world’s a stage

for strutting tyros in malevolence...

                *

Peace is another way.  Humility.

How Eeyore-mule (San Fran)

transmutes to Eero Saarinen.

With the power  of soul   any-

thing is possible   the tacit poverty

of yearning love  bent

by Br’er Francesco’s Lent

into a welcoming   equality

chaste eye of akme equity

out of an almond branch

in Petersburg   will launch

once more   peals of humanity

from the great Rose of Providence

wheeling & swinging wide

with Chartres sunlight   O glide

with me   downstream, Hobo   immense

Pacific beckons   from the galaxies

where kind Melchizedek

pours milk of live-oak

acorn mead   shares bread   from nursing

YHWH’s heart   sweet Manitou’s   delight.

Enfolded in the subtle veil

of golden fleece   & gray whale-

oil   that infinite fine safety-net

swings like a hammock in the breeze

beneath twin flaming pillars

where a starfish falls

& lifts her   from salt wave   to Paradise

7.19.17

the wind-chime found

FIFE-HUM

The gazebo is an octagon

of peace & quietness

this morning.  A salience,

a turtleshell (on gray-green

surface of a Sunday plane).

By the tumbledown back

fence, buried in black

soil & leaf-remains (rain-

soaked), I found a mysterious

old wind-chime.  Slim row

of silver pipes, bow-

tied to tangle free by turquoise

winged cherub (with turtledove

nestled against his chest,

like a kid’s cherished

carrier pigeon).  Bell-tones hove-

to in the air, by the furrowed brow

of weathered cedar gazebo-

door.  We’ve all passed over

the red, & through blue forest now

ring the tiny silver seraphim;

your carmine car is here

from emerald whispershere

cry the whirl-a-wings, that skim

in ferrous rings’ unmoving flight

above elongate coracle

of almond lips...  One coal

glows from steep well of night

                 *

like North Star in vast Ocean State

– one double rose wheel

swelling out of two – seal

of Elohim! – Love to consecrate;

the union of the subtle One

who hums through everyone

across creation – sun-

dance of manifold children, spun

by tread of Ariadne-gold –

maize ring of Chartres

frisbee’d to Paradise

atop oblong St. Louis mound

by monks’ naval arc-sheepfold.

As in shady Ravenna once

forecast of Providence

uttered by clay beseeching, rolled

from dusty lips toward dark mosaic;

fast prayer of Alighieri

bent by Beatrice

via sigh of starlight...  On a windbreak

east of Voronezh, quick beak

of finch-tuned Mandelstam

corrals her sweet I AM

within a limpid rill of spring – a streak

of black-gold monarch wings

slant toward akme

of octave solidarity –

whose fife-hum resurrection brings.

7.9.17

Shakespearean marzipan

THREE BEARS

Behind fine axe-hewn basalt

of the Incan hive, an eye

like Aaron Siskind, maybe –

quick, delicate, alert.

Mortised ramparts of any state

mark its mandala-border;

stone blooms of order

warp twisters of love & hate.

Only this human heart of flesh

harbors invisible diamond –

petal-scent of almond,

marzipan snowstorm (baked fresh).

Imagine one simplified snowflake

in three dimensions, spinning

like a gyroscope (one wing,

one leg) after one thunder-shake

of glassy dome – Will’s trident, maybe

in a late romance (Blackfriar’s

globe).  King Henry sires

trouble for himself – falls into sea

pursued by Bear.  Near Normandy,

flagship goes down – she’s lost,

it seems – until at last

Hermione steps forth, sleepy...

La Paix (familial, civil, global)

breathes yet, to dance once more.

It was Sir Thomas More,

lapped in bearskin, at the North Pole

                 *

who played the bear, who played the fool;

who played Disoriented Lamb

bleating I am, I am,

who flit the snowflake (melting soul);

his mother (Everywoman, from

Mulberry Street) wept

for the shame; she slept,

& it was glory in the end.  Hum

flickers (pictures in a whisper gallery).

The cranium of Unknown

Soldier wears the crown.

Empires of high frozen sophistry

shudder beneath an infant’s smiling

gaze.  It’s not the wise

who find the way (surprise!)

but every lovey-dovey Sing-Sing

resident – repentant heart, meek

mule.  Chaste planetary

hearth, Psyche-egalité –

bright thunder-akme... slant, oblique

world-pirouette... Hagia Sophia

in a peacock’s fan.  Tango,

barefoot kid’s fandango

under the sky-vaults in Ravenna –

light of my light & yours,

Waltz of Three Bears

by Mendelssohn.  Flares

Franciscan, by Pacific shores.

6.14.17

arise, iris

GOLDEN RULE

An iris opened on the first morning

in June.  Like a Byzantine

empress, rich purple &

gold – her petals butterfly wings

or flying buttresses at Chartres.

In the mirror of her eye

a spark of fiery beauty

keeps us tethered from the start

to time & clay & gravity.

What we know of day

stems from the way

her lullaby enclosed Night Sea

with human shores.  So poetry,

say Anna, Nicolai,

Osip; the warm akme

glows like a sun-hearth, humanly;

so that we feel at home on earth,

where all our rights & dignity

are cherished – held inalienably

near, defended, justified – their worth

continually savored by our freedom.

This the bright consensus

won by Athens once,

& by Jerusalem – that liberty of Rome

as well, as well-water.  Oasis

of mild light & shade,

Athena-keel for well-made

coracle – pilot’s compass

              *

through confounding waves – hardy braid

Arachne spun for us

to cross Pontus Axeinos

(Lethe too, returning from the dead).

Those immense majestic figs

haunting a promontory

in Pacific Sydney

guard the Observatory – wisdom’s pegs

around a mounted, tented hologram

of Southern Cross.  Diamond

of floating light – almond

icosahedron – luminous emblem

of the 6-way star Black Elk beheld

on prairie underneath wide sky

                  *

           *           *

                  *

invisible Manitou we travel by

all night, to where bridge-rivets weld

phenomena to Thanksgiving.

Kind circuit of a whisper-

dome, thy Presence clear

& sure Love-blessings bring!

That ghost dance out of Resurrection

Cimetière – when Buried

Man became unburied

after three days in the ocean-

chest of earth – concluded with a sail

due north, to Ocean

River, where it all began;

& now, like Jonah out of mother whale

                  *

or like Carlotta out of Vertigo

a little charley-horse

tightened its muscle-force

around the oaken knee of Sampo

(read : Humanity) amid thick shade

of English oaks (Fig-

Newton Township – dig?).

An acorn Lincoln-logos made

branched into spine & ribs & mast; 

the human rights of Edward

Coke transmuted seaward

in good Williams’ boat; at last

the courageous limb bore fruit – Soul

Liberty.  Where Alighieri

drew the line, we

carry on – our freedom’s in the whole

Thanksgiving Bowl of civil rights.

You cannot chain the wind

of smiling Manitou, nor bind

Creation with your rabid fights,

O fanatic unseasoned fools!

Free mind like lightning

(your dead branches blasting)

lifts just Jonah with her Golden Rule

& adds the pearl of high Sophia

Jesus chanted, Francis

planted... holy kiss

of cosmic Union – azure everlasting Gaia.

6.2.17