somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave

CAHOKIAN GIFT

The sun peeks through this February weather

as a frail reed or fluted candle

finds a chink in some Siberian

prison wall.  United States are altogether

in states of disarray today.  Tonight

the President’s speech will

be, no doubt, a veritable

trompe l’oueil – he will not make it right.

Henry too lingers in his fog

of disaffection.  Absent

from his Hobo-tent,

divided from his tiny tree-frog

peeper (cooing like a mourning dove

no larger than a copper penny –

greenish rust, gone silver Jonah

now, somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave).

He hears relentless Ocean River

bend the zodiacs toward clay,

Big Muddy bearing all away

into her coral Nephthys-quiver;

chambers of Coatlicue

like dead bee hives, storing

the crystallized outpouring

(zigzag red-black raven roundelay).

O motionless Greek urn, still turning,

Ezekiel-bones, still yearning!

Redeem Time’s churning

revolutions, Adonai – transfiguring

                        *

North Star!  You mantle humankind

like that Madonna della Misericordia

Piero della Francesca frescoed –

tricolor umbrella-shelter for the blind!

For Agape is a magnetic prong, threads

taconite to one Itasca

lady’s slipper (showy!) – &

drops rusty anchor of Rhode Island reds

into a lambent western window-rose

(mauve, scarlet, violet & blue)

where Hope beams into view –

& from her constant fortitude still glows!

So anchor Henry’s trembling canoe

deep in your heart-of-hearts’

matrix – where timespace floats –

in that classy garage Micòl showed you;

your forsaken Byzantine three-master

beached in parochial nowhere,

ferrying Alighieri into air.

Where the mosaic wave of our disaster

cradles in the love that heals despair

& shimmers there, like Juliet

walked back from fatal plummet

or Henry Bear, helped from his chair

of perilous dismay (to restoration

& recovery).  So lift

my hokey Cahokian gift

up to your Eye of Providence… Union.

2.4.20

Song of Songs in a snow globe

SWEET SNOW GLOBE

The twin foxes & three pine trees

on honeymoon (in a sweet

snow globe, in Norway).  What

use your Solomonic sarabande, these

loopy solemnities?  & the echoes

far into the motherland

Cahokia to maid’s Gravesend

your Adonai, my Adonis   a Memphis

trial by fire (intricate clay bark

buried in salt harbor).

O serious Nile laborer!

Nephthys, Dark Lady, mark

these fathoms of thy bottomland.

Snow was general over Ireland.

Strum the steel mandolin

then, Mary – plectrum in hand!

We climb out of the clay to shape

this Royal Arch, for St.

Latrobe & Son.  See the faint

wave-trace along its rim (crêpe

for a funeral train; flute-song

transcription).  Grain

melts into wine again –

the living man or woman prong

from earth.  We called it love

& swam into the circle

where snowflakes speckle

dark green live oaks (O crooning dove).

1.16.20

sketchy star-map

GREEN PYRAMID

The idea of Janus.  Osip is born;

war saw.  The tiny hexagons,

whose bite is bitterness

& valediction, zigzag down

here, in our Cerealian Capital

(Pillsbury, General Mills).

Grandpa, in Saskatchewan

wills grain elevators toward the pole.

Above these winter clouds, invisible

Venus the flower-star

describes tobacco-petal arcs –

Gravesend’s Dark Lady – indelible

cartwheeling Corn Maiden – springing

& sovereign rite of way;

dewy washerwoman, our MVP

lifting the horizon over D.C. (washing

everything).  Verily... except a corn of wheat

fall into the ground & die...

Over the green pyramid, an eye;

red rose for Memorial Day (complete

now, finished).  Elvira, out of Ravlin

opera, spins toward blue clay

herself.  We go that way

with snowflakes, with January’s frozen

squeaky violin... we go together.

At our reed-muddy center

she alights on the perimeter –

Adonai cornucopia, our milky tether.

1.15.20

from David Ovason, The Secret Architecture of the Nation's Capital, p.190

one common wheel

YELLOW TOY

Snow mantles the outstretched granite hand

of Roger Williams, floating

with benevolent feeling

over Providence.  Understand

this pioneer of liberty –

a spark from Edward Coke

whose Temple accent spoke

one common wheel of dignity

the lawful root of sovereignty

beyond despotic whim

in a vibrant realm

of transparent equality.

Within the wigwam of Canonicus

wings of Cautantowwit

Whitsun tide-light

new sign from lofty Okeanos –

Manitou beyond the earth.

Life of Miantonomi

lost on Path P

Christos   locked on Golgotha

the bread cast on the salt waters

returns as octahedral

diamond   of every soul

the living ground.  These gray matters

of galaxies   our origins

in chaste velocities

of Raven-sighs

are reconciled where Time begins

      *

in mid-most mind (O Adonai)

where gyroscopic spins

of corny gold Whitmans

drift from mosaic cupolae

Ravennas of ecstatic joy.

O lift the everlasting

Gates!  The iron spring

gives way – unleashes yellow toy

across the planetary warp –

Ariadne’s shuttle flies

arranging swift surprise

in Chartres maze, her fleecy harp

sounds rustic harmony

(rose choral wreath

of unison, beneath

mild luminous clerestory).

The ancient pattern of the whole

reflects an irrepressible

adoring Psyche – able

to melt each calcified soul

& mend the fractured skeleton

all shattered out of reason

to dehumanizing treason

(haughty deflections of half-men

swept up into strange self-defeat

by heart’s amnesia)...

Help them, Columbia!

Mercy makes Providence complete.

1.10.17