those double doors

DEEP RESCUE

Those double doors of the Baptistery

in Florence, where Alighieri

was restrained from returning.  He

might have admired the mastery

of Lorenzo Ghiberti – that golden river

of perfection, surging from

Eden to Gesthemani... some

inscrutable summa of Prime Mover

spoked in parables of heartbreak

& confusion (Miriam, lifting

both hands in agony).  So bring

what you have to a blindman’s break-

fast, to her Thanksgiving feast.

From the belly of a whale

came Jonah – whole & hale

as dolphin-breach (O swift grey beast)!

The linèd forehead of Leviathan

is like your own... therefore

be not dismayed.  Footsore

mule, flinty thin Prophet Stan,

your Livingstone (still at the Nile)

holds firm against the flow

of time – your steadfast glow

upon the brow of them who show.  Smile,

Indigo!  Passage to more than blue!

– these equilibria

of gyroscape... mute

mutualità, below the soil... deep rescue!

5.16.18

one Coke hand

LILAC-JOY

High fan of infant cottonwood leaves.

Their light-green spray,

pale sign of spring today.

Come late (come early May).  Cleaves

to the swollen river – spewing snowmelt,

winter flotsam, garbage.

Nature floats this mirage

of metaphors... for what the Sibyl spelt.

Your sister-dove (Jeannette-Columbia).

Shade of Beatrice –

plumb-bob Eurydice,

sounding the depths of Sheol (ephphatha).

On this day in 1775

Little Rhody broke the tie

with Mother England.  Die

is cast.  The wasps have left the hive.

Still an ineffable spider-bridge

dangles its catenary M

between two pillars.  Hymn

of Wisdom’s unbreakable pledge –

octave uniting heaven & human,

person to person – one

Coke hand, spun

to Ocean State... wide chordal span!

Your mirror of primordial Sea

(reflecting golden doors

of Baptistery) pours

lilac-joy – Love’s ripe To Be.

5.4.18

Noah's yawl

DANTE SCHOOL

Long ago in Florence, Alighieri

smashed the limestone font

at the Baptistery – Don’t

Panic! – to save a little boy

from drowning.  His prophetic sign,

a riposte for his own exile –

sluiced out with bile

& blood of lawlessness (Italian

style).  The sea rides high, the rain

seems endless.  Human

callousness a given,

leaden sinker-weights anchored in pain

call for a coracle, a basket-woven

safety net (to keep

the child alive, upon

the deep).  Cross-stitch the waves then,

Raven – paint Noah’s yawl afloat

until we memorize the name

that hawsers through this game

of crosshairs (golden, black & white).

Only a shadow over the sea;

an eyelash, lancing

a tiny tear.  So bring

your harp now, Queequeg – free

that pearl-feathered quasi-gull

whose omnipresence bobs

the wavy globe.  Corncobs

& acorns in Polenta (Dante school).

8.16.16