bobbing like a robin's nest

OKIE STUMP

Out of a thousand painted threads,

Agnes, you warp a frame

for some belle dame

of sanded mercy.  Mounds of pebble-

heads, broken by force... the list

of useless tears... unspoken

outrage in the caravan...

the camel’s otfe-hump (if you insist).

Henrigold the river-god

bobbers oiled Jordan

with Lorelei (raison

d’étoile – mosaic mermaid).

It was the frame, Agnes, it was

the bloom, encircling

a gold bee-sting –

it was the Viennese princess

who rose from copper strands of wire –

who lifted bottlecaps,

ineffable mayhaps

into a mossy petroglyphic spire.

O spider-thread of nothingness

O Hamlet’s hesitation

Guillaume Bier creation

bobbing like a robin’s nest

around an Okie stump (of Manitou)

twin-man   twine sister-span

love’s Everywoman

Miriam   a   song in C major   (for you)

11.30.16

Primary colors

LIFE-SAVERS

A warm December, Pearl Harbor Day.

Pale & luminous radiance

suffuses the primary colors

of the workmen’s big machinery

in the river (below Franklin Bridge).

Dazzling maternal uncle

Jim’s birthday – a Ravlin

clé to the mystery.  Mrs. Elledge

added those little busts of Bach,

Mozart, & Beethoven

to my piano-lesson

collection (when I finished each book);

I loved her.  Jim waltzed Agnes,

the Viennese musician’s

daughter, around Lincoln

Center – while his own jeune fille was

in the shrouds of late-adolescent

angst, despair.  O

Juliet... swallowed at last

by Frisco Bay (agenbite

of inwit, James).  The pearl in the harbor

was a vivid soul, before

that fall; maybe somewhere

the wind still ruffles her black hair.

The soul, like a robin redbreast, wavers

high on its dogwood branch

over each day’s routine

avalanche.  Hunts for life-savers.

12.7.15

Franklin Ave. Bridge

Don't ask me

Not much to say about this, except that it's part of a series, and that Stephano and Nunzio are father & son from Sicily (my regular haircut here in Providence).  "Agnes" is Agnes Eizenberger, from Vienna, my Uncle Jim's onetime companion.  (Also thinking of another icon-maker & diagram artist, Agnes Martin.)

VIENNA VEINS

Klimt was a kind of crooked wicket

out on a creaky limb

in Cricket City (rim

of Rimini, Parisian rivulet).

Gold.  Vienna veins of Ravlin

violins (we were there,

Agnes).  Do not compare.

It’s only an American Robin

Redbreast, hooded, yodeling...

he’s calling out your name.

Not Stephano (fair game

for Fame) nor Nunzio (clipping

the locks that flood across your face)

– though they are near.  The Boot

strides on.  The man is moot.

Your Crown is Everwhirr – mesh-lace

of spy-veil, ambling the source...

a poverty of materials

in a land of burials

& sunshine (Italy, of course).

Klimt limns the anguish in your eyes.

Through vales of Solomon

or Sheba, all the broken

kingdoms, poppy-fields (Grandpappy’s

ripe Epiphany).  Pain circulates

through straitened means

somehow – corny Earth-scenes

beyond our ken (Thanksgiving plates).

8.17.15

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907)