a thing a thane might ship

MUDDY WINDVANE

The muted pleading of the cottonwoods

meshed in a counterpoint

with myriad redundant

autumn leaves (Chet Baker, Miles).

Sorrow & joy, sickness & health

in a subtle weave of shocks

& echoes (mental blocks

were mystic chords once, Keith).

Beneath your penumbra, Alighieri –

a shadow pantomime.

Fleeting Ravenna rhyme

(Julie on the swing set, Henry

sailing from the limb, laughing).

The logic of your enigmatic

kerygma, then, epileptic

showman?  Merely a line curving

across historical time, into the light

emanating from your heart,

Galilean nazir-sport –

over a chessboard made of night

& day, an abba-rhyme pattern

(pax-bellum-pax, or king-

usurpavenger-prince... a thing

a thane might ship, a Grecian urn).

Bent overlords still shadowbox

musical echoes in refrain.

Mendelssohn leaf-rain

leads me back to Mirror Lakes

                   *

– twin lakes, twin mirrors (eyes

of Oedipus, Antigone) –

Twin Cities ceremony

curing the incest-curse (of Paradise).

You cannot have a child of gods

& men.  Like an albino

freak, or Minotaur

the twin will upset planting periods

& hunting prayers.  The High Priest

tears his robe.  He

says he is the One – he,

he!  Messiah-singularity (least

shall be greatest, last first).  Huh?

Henry earn him tragedy –

dumb spiral out of clay

turn muddy windvane of Columbia.

All about people you know, poetry.

Little Rhody, see –

Rog Williams, Tommy

Gould (Annie Hutchinson too, sadly) –

plumb from Sir Edward Coke

into self-government

by way of Charlie Second

(seedling restoration, kingdom oak)...

til little Providence become

a way of life (like yesterday)

& you reckon the penumbra

yon Lady of the Harbor harbors (hum)

10.28.19

Bronze Age harpoon

SNOW-CONFESSIONAL

These scarlet dogwood berries

sprinkling the patio

like drops of blood, O

thou October pale marine.  Seas

mottle thy face more than they should –

scars, age-spots, drawn

across youth long gone.  Her

billows drowned there, Robin Hood.

So the copper-pronged harpoon

dove deep, to sea-floor known

before Bronze Age.  Ravens

intone their learnèd funeral tune

& crows can recognize your face, 

Cautantowwit.  The moon

be pierced to russet soon;

your soul, also, cannot erase

persistent chronic blood-pain’s trace

that stains each chronicle

of hero-miracle,

mutters Antigone (in Mary’s place).

A coral circlet rings her hair –

aquamarine, full fathom

five; another kingdom

circumscribes (asper coin-lair).

You know it, Henry Buried-Man;

your snow-confessional

remorse codes – Rez is all.

Be reconciled, sez Rabbi Dan.

10.7.15

dogwood in October sun