on long feet

LIGHT RABBI

Calm evening at the end of April.

Wisdom of the ancients –

unity of changing constants.

A continuum… a synthesis… a will

to find a meaning in the whole;

a portion of instinctive

gratitude – the urge to live

unfolding origami in the soul.

We dwell beneath an aegis of benevolent ideas

like clouds (reflecting sunlight,

bringing rain).  & everything

will be all right, my father said – his palm

over my flooding eyes.  This the providence

of sparrows & tall kings –

of all those feathered things

that soar so bravely into turbulence.

So then… who’s your imaginary friend,

Henry?  That loony Hobo

drifting from his local slough

down to the Gulf of Mexico?  Just a bend

in the river?  See thou, Hart says

– touches a key, perhaps.

After the world-collapse

he’ll still be burbling his sabbath-sense;

planting a tender middle C

between Ocean & me

where clay & sea

are cleft at last, to rescue Thee 

                *

– the clé to my ecclesia, Julie – 

a soft glissando pour l’église

from San Francisco to Louise

(grey Dolphy surfacing beside me).

& if reality is simply a supremely poetic idea

then the Imago of images

is like a seed of peacefulness –

a still point (painted on a bowl in Cahokia)

or that eye-in-hand Hobo held out to me

the wad of river-mud

Rabbi patterns for the blind

saying, Ephphatha… (gently, gently).

Everything has already been redeemed

& an orb rests in Hobo’s eye

with dewfall of memory

& earth-pangs for the not-yet-dreamed.

Everything rising with the soeur-coulombe

the sister-dove, the Jonah-Joan

the twin, O my beloved one

light Rabbi hopping through the gloom

on long feet   heading for the nest

on crest of wave

that vertical canoe-nave

pronged   at heart of Southern Cross

6 tracks of Black Elk diamond

ghost dance of Rio del

Espiritu   sprung up

for you & me   out of dis April pond

4.30.20

the clay wheel of America

HARLORN NINT

The tiny Russian church on Franklin Avenue

like an Easter toy box

– St. Pantaleimon – is

slowly, slowly, expanding in size (cinnamon-blue

eggshell transept… more light from East).

& this is Sirin-Nabokov’s birthday;

my mother’s interest led me

to find him too; Pnin, Pale Fire, a kind of yeast

for hilarious risings into Harlorn Nint

(you sense what he meant).  &

never mind, supercilious gent,

that I myself am bumptious Pantaloon –

(hint, hint).  Her ocarina loon-call

from Petersburg bridge

stays here, with me; the edge

has never left my raven-knife; Hope’s all.

We saw the Pantaleon window, painting light

across the massive maze

at Chartres.  He was

a Nicomedian healer-martyr, “all-compassionate”;

the tromping Emperor (sick Pantalone

himself) despised his expertise.

Some judgement-grave (not nice)

whorls in a spiral from Big Muddy Zone;

the clay wheel of America is heavy

as concrete.  I set my seal

across him swamp-gray dollar bill –

the eye of Providence over the levy

*

dealt by Pharaoh.  Each eye shall be

flooded with Cairo salt

when Black Elk’s figure 8

echoes (6 ways) Ravenna’s quay Rhody.

& then the Isis-eye of that palm-print

curls into acorn coracle…

green glint of dovecote-oracle

(Ionian emerald, honey-gold & mint)

when two wheels meld in one almond

& a blood-red waxen overlay

(the shattering of JFK)

molts Newport ships to ancient Trebizond.

I set my seal there, in a double ring

where the canoe binds equilibria

– Gateway curving to Cahokia

& up & down, from Delta to the spring.

It is a Janus-face – past & future

reconciled there, pain

& hope.  Because the vin

et pain of his free-will suture

like that flint beak of Mandelstam, reaching

into the wound, to heal

will reconcile Love & the Real

with a Redemption already achieved (teaching

of Cullmann, as in Pushkin & Scriabin).

& so the grail-stone of the eucharist

whence the 4 Eden-streams will burst

marks twain upon our Mississippi spin.

4.22.20

down around Kay-Rho

SALT-LICK

Prince Henry Hal, like a latter-day Latrobe

went surveying his great property

in swamps – following Path P

down around Kay-Rho, mapping his globe.

& he was most lost.  Loster than lost.

His sidekick Hobo sighed.  Said –

this palm at the end of your mind

holds an eye that glows, a wave-tossed

moon.  Pearl, embossed with diamond

& ruby… emeralds for eyelashes.

There, where kingfisher splashes –

a quatrefoil rose window, set in almonds.

Notre Dame burned down today, Hobo.

The blaze destroyed the spire,

almost the whole… – F’ sho.  Fire

will do that.  But there’s another one, y’know.

We already passed that house.  Down MLK

Way, on Black Elk Boulevard

(in Buffalo).  Look hard,

Henry – you’ll see him sign the X-tree

with his finger… mark the six trails

like a phosphor Southern Cross.

His medicine mends every loss –

’twas his last full measure split the rails

like lightning.  Now the brave who give

their lives to heal the sick

come to his green clover salt-lick –

circle the hearth-fire – bright, contemplative.

4.15.20

pokey asphodel

SMOKE-TREASURY

That the diamond exists, murmurs Black Elk

justifies your dream.

Octahedral theme

of orientation by humility (MLK

& JFK meet in your mandala-canoe).

As Roger the Seeker christened

Providence a refuge, at the end

of seeking (for beginning anew).

To model the heavenly kingdom of God

in clay, or dusty speech

like a doorway, or Gateway Arch;

like rose mandorla, made of flesh & blood.

Not city on a hill, but village

in a valley, by the river’s

mouth – one Narragansett

giver’s canonical Key into the Language

of America.  That the diamond exists

justifies your dream

in shades.  Mandelstam

(in Pushkin & Scriabin) writ of this –

because the Redemption has already happened

art is set free, to celebrate

(watch Oscar Cullmann adumbrate

this meaning in his diagram).  The End

is the beginning.  Not that the end has come.

Only interrogate

this blistered heart

to find that smoky rite of Eastern Rome

                   *

spring in the limping step of herald Hart

or the epileptic anguish

of poet Prof. English

Berryman (in his hexagonal ziggurat

of Resurrection Cemetery – over the river

from St. Paul).  Come home,

patters that silver stream

from crane-bone flute (archaic sliver

flinting mica, in Cahokia); a raven

laughter diagram

or Bluejay paradigm

or Jonah-dove conundrum (rune haven);

a sweeping cry out of Cautantowwit’s

smoke-treasury; an answer

for yon affectionate peacemaker

when he crawled into the Narragansetts’

welcome-tent.  A smile (ineffable

as that 6-sided snowflake

traced by Black Elk

over the grave of Buffalo Bill).

All this intricate nautical geometry!

– these asides by Hobo,

his obeisance to Venus (Virgo-

ascendant sunset cemetery) –

is just the flimsiest balsa-wood scale model

of an Old Ironsides ark

or Constitution… spark

for Gravesend dancing-floor (pokey asphodel).

3.11.20

dream song for Mardi Gras

WIDE SWINGS

In the remote silence of your dream

little Ojibwa cowboy,

every word, every sigh

your lips would bend to the birch beam.

Each syllable would lift up smoothly

like wing or wave, to join

the sarabande procession

flashing tiny stars in their night-cloud sky.

The piety of Aeneas or of Abraham

is tinctured with the same

topaz humility; the fame

of Black Elk flares no different requiem;

& Hobo’s yearning in the Bottomland

& Henry’s striving at the source

obey the same bone-flute discourse –

to verify one sweet-tempered command.

& like a low B-flat trombone bass line

out of some Delta funeral-song

the aura of her Don’t-be-long

with magnetism of her Love, B-mine

goes rippling counter-clockwise, from St.-J

to D.C. piles of masonry

& back to Lake Itasca –

& like mustard monarch or viceroy

lifts tender, glancing & reflective wings

to meet your own, brave

Jessie-Isis – clear sea-wave.

Peace pipes over the Golden Gate, wide swings.

2.25.20

up in Montrose Park

PINE-SMOKES

The war to end all wars was done.

On May 29th, 1919

Sir Arthur Eddington

tested heavy light, suspended

in a thread around the moon-black sun;

so gravity bent clay

toward refining accuracy.

Black Elk extends to six directions

silent gratitude & recognition,

just as an icon speaks

in speechless pine-smokes

or a painting glows with valedictory

emotion.  Around the summer solstice

rose-phosphorus sunset

seals the monuments’ regret

in Washington – western promise

magnifies & coalesces, in a microcosm

(up in Montrose Park,

at Avon Place, by River R).

That armillary zodiac, or star-prism

revealing violence, imperial dominance

(diagonal to its redeeming

countersign) – entangling

mn-mutter, amid all circumstance…

sweet Angel, levitant above the cancer

of the Capital; fleet-

footed Evening Star, bright

Pocahontas (waterlogged Delta, triangular).

2.24.20

on six directions

CLAY CUP

I will not rival Dante’s double

spiral (from depth of Hell

to heart of Love) but spell

a complementary bubble-

rêve, mapped on the horizontal.

Infernos of damnation,

sparks of elation

harbor here – my guide no Virgil,

only turtle-speed Hobo;

not Beatrice now

but one blithe ocean-dew

rainbow (her smiling Jonah-brow).

Like that mercurial Micòl in Ferrara

she lights my imagination

with X-S creation,

aslant from Providence to Frisco –

a river, crossing at the Gateway Arch

like some switchback, Pawnee

Missouri – molding a key-

stone at Cahokia (ten fingers’ kiln-torch).

Where slowly, slowly, the potter’s wheel

with shaping eye-in-hand

rotates the whole land

counter-clockwise – churns against the keel;

casting her clay cup on six directions

like Black Elk diamond –

firing her mandala-almond

amid each human hearth-rose (Hobo reckons).

8.5.19