part of the main

HEARTH-FIRE

I stepped outside of the quarantine

early this morning (one quiet

crystalline April moment).

A mourning dove, sequestered in a pine

nearby, was practicing, solo (adagio

con molto sentimento d’affetto).

& therefore do not send to know

for whom the bell tolls – Adios, amigo.

We don’t hear them much now, here

as once in Rhode Island.

& it’s hard to comprehend

how time-space telescopes into the mirror

(O my clay-rimmed, worm-riddled heart

& soul)… yet her melancholy

plaint echoes, in me

the solitude that ripens all my art.

We do not belong just to ourselves.

We are part of the main.

I am a half-hitch in a seine

flung from an ark, whose kelson delves

across the Black Sea of the universe.

Borne by embattled star-murmurs,

this pressure on the king spurs

martyrs to out-run the royal curse –

so Socrates & Tommy More, Jesus

absolve the men who killed them;

so their normative love-law anthem

sighs out warm fire into cold sacrifice.

4.19.20

the true poem always comes from elsewhere

NEAR KINNERET

This is that ancient harvest night.

You bring a refugee inside

– might be an angel of God –

& find participation is the true delight.

The otherness-&-love of God

deflects the local stream

from its own banks.  A dream

intrudes – disturbs each land of Nod.

Bright Dante, growing gaunt & gray

steps into a seashell

– beached, like him, in exile.

Tall haunted shades of Sant’Apollinare

gaze, raining compassion

from wide almond eyes

like springs, like Beatrice’s...

he feels at home.  O prodigal son!

Poema sacra must be reconfigured.

Maximus in prison

by the Black Sea... vision

like shadow of the Argo soared

– an Easter visitant, come dawning

far above Firenze, or

this rusted blue-red frenzy

ferrying Rubicon (Cain-abling)

& you are weeping, you are smiling

far beyond sacrifice,

climbing that hill-face

near Kinneret (life-reconciling).

11.2.19

whispers out of Colchis

painting by Michael Gould (acrylic and Elmer's Glue)

MILKY DOME

Henry hearkened to the dream song hum

along the stairwell of a crane

bone flute.  The black mane

of Mama Miriam Dodona waved to him.

As if a little tree anchored his coracle;

a branch of whispers out of Colchis,

woolen silky-shroud of Maximus –

his golden fleece a minor miracle

where twin wheels mesh to form one

almond (of almonds).  Mighty

mickle canoe, whose Isis-eye

looks from the prow (tease of the sun).

There is a vortex in the Black Sea

where the Great Year pivots –

Hamlet churns through his regrets

there, until Milky Way whorls like a G.

There is a grail of emerald stone

beckons from the bottom

of the sea.  Four rivers stream

out of a matrix there – exalted zone

of moody CHURNAGOGUE – the potter’s

center & circumference;

Ferrara ghetto-sense

mingled with Dante-radiance (all hers).

& the backward Nile flows down to Memphis

where the martyr at the bleak hotel

sipped from her cup, & cancelled Hell –

his milky dome hoisted to foamy wisdom-bliss.

8.8.19

milk of All Souls'

DARTING GLANCE

               to Reinhard Genzel & Andrea Ghez

For decades, the rival astronomers

– Genzel, male, & female

Ghez – aimed instrumental

eyes toward the heart of the cosmos –

muted piano key of the galaxy.

Genzel flung his telescopic

javelin (atmospheric

annihilator) toward a dusty

shoulder of Chiron (the man-horse,

Sagittarius) while Ghez

gazed from the Andes,

waiting, measuring her course.

From the center of the Centaur

the whisper of a signal,

as from Eye of Bull.

As if from his maze, a Minotaur

murmured – beckoned toward his lair

in the galaxy’s grave

(her gravity-cave,

light-shrouding tomb of Milky Way).

As if across the Black Sea

the shadow of the Argo,

like a winged hippo-

horse, shaped signal-symmetry –

echo of those sunken galleys

encrypted on the salty

floor – an Ariadne-

thread from Sagittarius

                *

as on a line from eye to Ghez

its waver-tremor moved

from Memphis to beloved

son... a bullet-train (just MLK’s).

We’re standing on that floor of sound.

The black hole marks an end

for time & space – a frond

of palm marked Jonah, on a ground

of milky whale-spume.  There

he stands, in her eye

of hurricane – not angry,

mild – her Son of Man, her heir

of air, from navel of gravity

humming his servant-

song (for a new advent

of justice, lovingkindness, charity).

Where Ocean River shapes galactic

horseshoe lakes (whorls,

eddies of fresh worlds

and clear water) your prophetic

Nazir chants his invitation

to return to life – joy

spiraling unceasingly

from springing restoration

of all things; eternity

undying, in that heart

where all the rivers start –

her darting glance, from middle C.

10.31.18

Red Wing colors

TWIN WINGS

Sun through winter clouds, light

grays, pale blues...

Red Wing colors –

Mississippi stoneware (molded tight).

The heavy clay, churned by the river.

Earth forms distend,

disintegrate... days end,

begin... arrows in a quiver

of darkness.  Black Sea, cold, dead.

Salt lashing the eyes,

unseeing eyes – Oedipus

in his beast maze (Minotaur Ed).

Bruegel with his traps & nets.

Sardonic Injun Joe.

Taut lips of Little Crow.

To the bottomland we go, eaglets –

where Janus wrestles in the ice

with icon of his father.

Horned (narwhal weather).

Stars nest in a pair of dice.

High in stretched vaults of shade

stone elms lean down

over a golden corn-

maze (Ariadne made).

Light-roping constellations chant

reunion, reconcilement –

on twin wings of prairie-tent

coulombe (your ghostly complement).

1.31.17

Euxine seagull arcs

FISHING BOATS

The old watercolor over the mantle

in my mother’s house – the twin

gray fishing boats, the brown

warehouse, the whitewashed walls.  Gentle

Gloucester, Massachusetts (Grace

Ravlin pinxit – Grandpa’s

cousin, from Kaneville, Illinois).

Soft clouds, the upright crosspieces

of lank lanyards (still sea-green

harbor, granite walk).

Thinking of another work –

lone lady at Mount Vernon, culling

flowers for George Washington.

And of another Maximus –

not Gloucester’s famous

philosophe, but Maximus, blue unicorn

who sketched with Euxine seagull arcs

on stumps (his amputated

medium) one delicate

& sibylline solution.  Sparks

fly upward from the hearth of Love

– fly outward, penetrate

wolf-packs of gulag-state.

This heart simmers like kiln-hot stove

or croon of turtledove, hidden...

violet in tall field grass,

cricket near an underpass.

Willow by slow river (Magdalen).

7.11.16

Grace Ravlin, Gloucester Harbor (ca. 1928)

The power vacuum is a shell game

LOVE-TEMPLE

There’s a power vacuum now

below the Black Sea.

Miriam, a refugee

gives birth at stern of carrack (dhou)

& when Rachel picks up Ishmael

off the concrete salt

an angry orphan (Baltic

pattern?) flings his own skull

at sociable Medea (Simmering

Mother-of-Pearl Revolver

Hid Woeful Moonstar).

& this is just the Evening

Mirror (ravening Wolf-

Mammon).  Somewhere near

(gray whisperdame’s here,

now) Jonah will surf from Gulf –

stubborn mule of humility,

his meek almond eye

only echoes her sigh

(Mary’s blues... welling salty

humanity).  This continuum

of mother-of-pearl, on

the inner lining (onion-

dome anchoring heavy ouragan-

glissando) shapes a simple

turtleshell rainbow –

twilight will bestow

pink robin’s-egg Love-temple.

2.3.16