call him Halfway Hank

FICTIONAL GARAGE

Hobo staggers along the riverbank

halfway between Henry

& Osiris (bury-

man).  Call him Halfway Hank.

Like Bluejay all out of mummer’s tricks

memories of a Myth America

detach from his hat (ha-ha,

caw-caw).  Tall Tale of Two-Sticks

maybe – or The Time We Had a Picnic.

Nostalgia for infinity

invokes our Plenty-

Big-Prairie; mysterieux Henri Pick

was anonymous, along with Alexander P.

These meadowlands are Russian.

Thunder’s Oblomovian this

afternoon (American iz you & me).

So memory would like to dab a fresco

containing a continent.

As when a canoe is bent

around a bough of yew, or spent willow...

in some fictional garage in Ferrara

where recent immigrants

gather for sustenance

like Jonah huddled in a whale’s cantina

& the eye in your hand opens like a tear

& the river streams into the Gulf

where Wolfram & Beowulf

celebrate Thanksgiving (more Grail? – here).

7.16.19

rivers keep on rolling

BRIGHT SALT

A clear day toward Thanksgiving.

Light on slight mantling

of snow, along the slanting

Mississippi (wave of returning

gravity into the mouth, the Gulf).

There is a magnet

in the heights, a great

Pole Star, that rotates over Beowulf,

Black Elk; there is a matrix point

for all our muttering,

for crazy flotsam drifting

to the sea... a limestone font.

A child climbed from a light-lapped cave

along a spiral trail –

a thread from beryl-burial

to emerald grail (one sea-swell wave).

Beneath grey-wingèd clouds she rose,

called forth by whisper-smoke

of Earth’s holm-oak.

Her name is Imago, her echo flows

into the planetary sarabande –

stately processional

(spring, summer, fall)

to Morning Star, at seasons’ end.

Her name is Liberty, she rides the prow

of every soul – bright salt

of gaiety – the glistening vault

of Ariadne’s crown gracing her brow.

11.21.16

Walking through bookstore on errand for library, pass the poetry shelf, see Beowulf.  Recall that poetry is sort of distillation/projection of one's experience of beauty.  Recurrent memory:  high school, leaning barefoot on back porch reading anthology of French poets.   Luxe, calme et volupte.

Distillation, charter, code.