the palm, the fiery gates

PRAIRIE ROUNDELAY

American robin on my fence

I sense you are a friend

& neighbor – here to lend

your orange breast, for salience –

swell-sign of aerial fellowship

in gravid cave-adventure

(blue waves of chicory

pacing old roads, from Boston slip

to San Francisco).  How your edgy

yodeling interrogates

our grubby, wormy hates –

sclerotic, squamous tragedy

of shriveled hearts, rancid hypocrisy!

You diagram with song

a madrigal so strong,

so many voices in emergency

merge into blueprint buoyancy –

manifest (garnet clay

prairie roundelay)

a ship-shape evening constancy.

Mute gesture from crow’s-nest G-ray!

Memory, beyond time

salts a Boethian rhyme-

beat... in quella Roma onde

Cristo è Romano.  Staunch ruddy

steersman indicates

the palm, the fiery gates,

Pacific O... – Eternity! is all his study.

6.7.16

Map of Rhode Island, 1780

Along Path P

INFANT BROW

At the crossroads, the just man suffers

just for being just –

Job, or Boethius,

or Jesus – carrying a load for others.

Dante whispers in Ravenna dusk

near his exile’s end.

Beatrice, penned

in a rose window, sets his task –

to sing the icon that he sees

breathing through granite

as turtledoves through light

gray feathers tune the breeze.

Stillness in time.  Iron history

crowns an infant brow...

the Son of Man, now

turning evergreen (in Maggie’s

almond eye).  The desolations

of a nightmare fade

when that rusty parade

sinks into brown decades (stations

on the prairie).  Mary Morning Star

signals her six ways

along Path P...  Praise

Manitou & Manitou-Child, our

big-eared Bunny Rabbi – he

of the octave melody –

which we sang, Adonai,

before dawn, one Epiphany...

4.11.16

El Shade-Eye

UNBROKEN SMILE

If I murmur a little in your direction,

little almond tree, lessel

mandel baum, it’s only

because you’re a little evergreen

in my heart – still leaving, leaving

from the great ash mast

where you still last, & last...

as if lashed to a breathing & grieving

breeze.  Maxims, beatitudes

sing through its rigging

(cicada-susurrus, pinging

from Maximus, Boethius)...

its compass just a simple carpenter’s

level’s bubble-eye –

a kayak reciprocity-

needle, trained on bent meteor’s

immaculate arc (unbroken smile

from sky to Ojibwa midway

way).  Immense gravity

waves emanate from a small gray pebble,

tossed off the stern like a Jonah-

pigeon, never to return –

Raven or Betyl-stone

(anchor sunk to seabed zone).

A pyramid of limestone glyphs

guards fair mum-tomb;

your skipper’s Sophie-doom

from living lips... (forever flips).

2.17.16

Truth shall make you free

CHICORY MENOROTH

There were Goulds for 150 years

plowing granite outcrops

in New Hampshire.  Topsfield

nurtured them, with jagged shears,

thick brambles, frozen lakes.

They strove in relative

obscurity – no live

broadcasts, no edited remakes.

Live Free or Die.  The grumpy stoic

emits a little light,

no less – the gift outright

be given back (one life, unique).

An intuition of soul liberty,

that’s all – that one might have

life in oneself, to serve

& swerve again (Boethian quiddity);

that conscience might arise like spring

in blustery New England –

a crocus prancing gold

before snow melts; your being

perfect, in a sense (meek master

of your own ramshackle

chicken-yard, O Jacqueline).

You glimpse them off the highway – chicory

menoroth, maybe – glimmering

remote star-woodcuts,

lamps over lonely fields...

just rightness in your bones (beaming).

2.8.16

Big Rabbit & the Can-Canute

TOTEM-GHOST

Winter.  An imperturbable water-serpent

flows smoothly south, under

the presiding MN-arch

(Peace Bridge).  Cloud-blanket (quiet, lambent

silverthought).  Ice-glancing light

of North Star State –

each ray will penetrate

the sixpack hexagons of Snow Rabbit

– that giant Bigfoot totem-ghost

Sophie & Phoebe rolled

to quasi-life (backyard).

Some Hiawatha Teotihuacan (host-

figure, phantom King).  Messiah

is a butterfly.  Love,

Love, and be loved, beloved

Bumblebee – amen, selah.

This glossy lala glossolalia

is like a peacock’s choral

cry, or agate-spiral

Saverin-Canute, out of Iona

(green Columba’s jaybird hymn).

At the spare crossrood

of naked servitude –

Boethius, Maximus, beaten

senseless – there Polaris burns,

& melts into the heart

of summer Ocean.  Start

your laddie-dance, lass – Roy returns.

1.26.16

Old man Boethius

DAWN STREET

In the ash-gray sky, where the ravens drift

in the Bruegel scene, over winter

panorama – harbor

& skating rink, riddle & gift...

In remote perspective, the raven’s eye

reaps furtive memory,

most ancient flame.  We

walked together, you & I

down the dawn street, in spousal light;

only a pigeon-murmur

echoed our passage there.

The hearth’s full of embers (life is night).

Old man Boethius steps out

his syllables, each

vowel like a cherished

peach.  This radiance will cast

doubt into shade (beneath pine branches

where salted gratitude

savors his fortitude).

Beatrice-Columbia suddenly launches

into sweet aria of praise

when Jonah surfaces

from dove-grey eyes

of everlastingness   Apollinaire’s

fumes   filter into laughter

War to End All Wars

a cloverleaf surprise

renders mercy on earth   hereafter

1.17.16

Crossing the Rubicon, again...

ONE SPRING

The river across the street still flows

under thickening ice, ceaseless.

Its lesser tributaries

(Minnesota, Minnehaha) also

persist – all of them subsiding

into Ocean River

finally (only a quiver

rippling Time).  Julius is sliding

a handkerchief across his brow

in 49 B.C.

The die is cast, sez he.

Yokels on Rubicon blow

tubas now – let War decide.

World empire in his grip,

peace is ordained.  Slip

the noose over each parricide

(Brutus, Absalom); the father’s

kingdom will be certified,

et ratified, in blood.

Shadow of a kingfisher

rotating in graffiti’d alcove.

Boethius & father

(Symmachus) share

fort et dur... Ravenna love-

keen (after bronze millennium).

Time’s universal –

history’s rehearsal

for a mangy star-profundum

                 *

deeper in the soul o’man

than Solomon arrayed

or Emperor betrayed.

An agate, tossed in Jordan

sand.  Halcyon day (of almond

shade, & waterfall).

Life’s good, is all –

big benison de tout l’monde.

Reaches through the harvest of

your Martian scythe, O

Death, to something more –

the milky Rio of the Blest.

It is Beyond.  It’s over yonder.

Everywoman’s Eridanos,

Poe’s Eureka.  Moses

glimpsed it in his heart’s far

island (yours, mine) – soul

liberty’s Belle Isle –

Eternity (only

a smile from here).  Glows, whole.

There were 4 rivers flowing

out of Eden, toward

House of 4 Pines (word

lost on the wind).  All knowing

& loving, all doing & being

gathered in a khipu

knot... arc of yew

over limestone grave (one spring).

1.11.16

Minnehaha Falls

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

HIGH SOPHIA

My mother’s golden watercolor

of a corner by the porch

door – let us approach

this summer morning autumn splendor

as it was, & will be once again.

An open door in Hopkins

Minnesota spins

its Manitou of teeming pain

et vin (an infinite childhood);

Alighieri in Ravenna

summons high Sophia

in the guise of Beatrice... would

she still circumference all human

knowledge in her arms?

Beyond Hell’s harms

stands Boethius – Consolation

rhymes (decline & fall of Rome)

with Dante’s futurismo

(Roma onde Cristo

è Romano) – one bright sunlit home.

Paisans, turkeys, sheep draw near.

The meal c’est commencé.

Massasoit & Williams here play

host – what was a funeral pyre

unfolds to cornucopia.

The crux of natural law

is liberty’s Commedia –

all-human Earth joins Milky Way.

11.25.15

Ides of October

LIPS MONASTERY

This bright transparency of mid-

October Providence –

sweet-sad remembrance

of the princely sun (Caesar’s eyelid,

drooping into Ides).  Boethius,

last of the Romans, slips

away into Sophia-deeps,

drowses beneath dogwood leaves;

little feathery flesh-tone coins

of wild oats dangle, sway

on pale green stalks today.

She’ll plant them with Galla’s remains,

he mutters to himself.  The monarch’s

just a social butterfly;

none need any longer die

in her doctrine.  Light-waves, arcs

of arches, radiating from

a central hearth... archaic

woodland (near Itasca)

where the springing pendulum

of springs is born.  Moss-green Alph

to mauve Omega, vibrant

strings (O most ancient

of lays!) knot Ocarina Everysylph

into her vale of Inca-tiers –

a tinder Lips Monastery,

quicksilver Philosophy

lifts Rome to Mexican cedars.

10.15.15

tame wild oats

Have been reading Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, one of those great things you should have read in college... & have Peter O'Leary to thank, by circuitous way of his comments on poet Frank Samperi...

the labyrinthine/byzantine Neo-Platonic/Christian theological history of late antiquity is something I'd like to know more about... those old complex speculations, articulated by Plato & Aristotle, on God, Being, Nature, Person actually might have some relevance for literary criticism, & the idea of developing a "General Criticism" for US poetry world...

(of course it's all old hat for the Postmoderns...)

say for example the Aristotelian idea that individual things (including persons), in their individuality, are, strictly speaking, unclassifiable... - this might have some relevance for the way a critic would want to evaluate an individual poet...

But we have a homegrown school of criticism (The Chicago School, 1950s-60s - R.S. Crane, Richard McKeon, Elder Olson & others) who did some profound exploring in this area - researches on method, & the relation between criticism, literary history & philosophy...

might provide a basis for a new "General Criticism"...