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

April is the finickiest month

SMOKE PILLARS

April is the finickiest month, sunshine & snowfall

confusing the fiddleheads.  Atop the bluff

across from St. Paul, three tough-

soft Indian mounds are igloo-domical.

A little further down, the buried poet-man

dreams in Resurrection Cemetery.

& further yet, across from Eero’s airy

Gateway Arch, Cahokian terraces remain –

vernal ziggurat earthworks climb into sky.

The river moves in swerves… &

doesn’t move.  A copperhead,

unblinking, eyeing you… deciding – live or die?

Flanking that rushing flickering stillness

the mounds are more than motionless.

How… curious crowds can only guess.

Perpetual smoke pillars curse & bless.

Yet these temples are only an analogy.

Even the priests understood

that much.  The man tied to wood,

the woman in flames… perverse apology

in the bloodshed glass – recognition

forsaken.  Of the friend

nearby, who takes your hand…

(a glance to the heart, beyond perdition).

These vast mausoleums of bone & ash

frame unwavering grief.

Magdalenian memory, beyond belief.

& the light will not die (dwells in her eyelash).

4.13.20

like Frisco shepherd

SOLID AIR

Our Lenten season creaks along.

Involuntary shut-ins

calibrate their sins

or contemplate that deep-time throng

still singing songs through solid air

(celestial City on a Hill).

Who loves like Roger will

yet see Rose Isle, past baleful stare

& power-grabbing guile.  Meanwhile

Prince Hal will follow Hobo

like Huck Jim, & go

where currents flow (deep Delta style).

That Sleeping Lord of David Jones

dreams watercolor landscapes

old as Magdalenian apes,

bright as Justinian gemstones…

they glow with compassionate faces

beneath shimmering raven-stars

across midnight blue

while drowsy Hobo rolls a smudge of clay

(Pipestone maroon) into an eye

anchored in leafy palm (ala

Cahokia) – de son bateau c’est clé.

The King looks from his mandorla

like Frisco shepherd… mild

as forest mint gone wild,

sweet as nursing nightingale (selah).

His mother is the Queen of France,

his father is invisible

whose whispers out of Israel

ignite Prince Hal’s American romance.

4.6.20

beneath Corona Borealis

BLUE CANOE

While boy-o Henry skipped down Arthur St.

in birdsong Mendelssohn

a few miles up the trolley line

J. Buried-Man lingered on Arthur Ave (complete

Dream Song lament, at 57).  In Paris now

they’ll have to reconstruct the nave,

restore each curving architrave.

This knave goes drifting to St. Lou – his blue

canoe, beached crosswise (by Cahokia)

a kind of compass needle

aimed straight up.  Will weedy

Hobo ever stand erect himself?  Selah,

Ezekiel, Isaiah.  At San Vitale in Ravenna

or at Notre Dame, pilgrims

still stamp across the lurking limbs

of Lucifer – ravel a penitential way

by grace of Mary’s Ariadne-avatar.

It was her love for Theseus

(like Maggie Miriam’s for Jesus)

reeled him out, dis-mazèd – free & clear.

Lone Henry looks straight up, to Pole Star.

Ariadne’s Crown.  The toxic night

a donnybrook for his distraught

Columbia – his ark battered by Minotaur,

his Constitution of chaste liberty

suborned (sat on by Putin’s man).

Look, pilgrim, to the heights again –

whence cometh Thunderbird.  Dove… see?

3.29.20

somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave

CAHOKIAN GIFT

The sun peeks through this February weather

as a frail reed or fluted candle

finds a chink in some Siberian

prison wall.  United States are altogether

in states of disarray today.  Tonight

the President’s speech will

be, no doubt, a veritable

trompe l’oueil – he will not make it right.

Henry too lingers in his fog

of disaffection.  Absent

from his Hobo-tent,

divided from his tiny tree-frog

peeper (cooing like a mourning dove

no larger than a copper penny –

greenish rust, gone silver Jonah

now, somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave).

He hears relentless Ocean River

bend the zodiacs toward clay,

Big Muddy bearing all away

into her coral Nephthys-quiver;

chambers of Coatlicue

like dead bee hives, storing

the crystallized outpouring

(zigzag red-black raven roundelay).

O motionless Greek urn, still turning,

Ezekiel-bones, still yearning!

Redeem Time’s churning

revolutions, Adonai – transfiguring

                        *

North Star!  You mantle humankind

like that Madonna della Misericordia

Piero della Francesca frescoed –

tricolor umbrella-shelter for the blind!

For Agape is a magnetic prong, threads

taconite to one Itasca

lady’s slipper (showy!) – &

drops rusty anchor of Rhode Island reds

into a lambent western window-rose

(mauve, scarlet, violet & blue)

where Hope beams into view –

& from her constant fortitude still glows!

So anchor Henry’s trembling canoe

deep in your heart-of-hearts’

matrix – where timespace floats –

in that classy garage Micòl showed you;

your forsaken Byzantine three-master

beached in parochial nowhere,

ferrying Alighieri into air.

Where the mosaic wave of our disaster

cradles in the love that heals despair

& shimmers there, like Juliet

walked back from fatal plummet

or Henry Bear, helped from his chair

of perilous dismay (to restoration

& recovery).  So lift

my hokey Cahokian gift

up to your Eye of Providence… Union.

2.4.20

Song of Songs in a snow globe

SWEET SNOW GLOBE

The twin foxes & three pine trees

on honeymoon (in a sweet

snow globe, in Norway).  What

use your Solomonic sarabande, these

loopy solemnities?  & the echoes

far into the motherland

Cahokia to maid’s Gravesend

your Adonai, my Adonis   a Memphis

trial by fire (intricate clay bark

buried in salt harbor).

O serious Nile laborer!

Nephthys, Dark Lady, mark

these fathoms of thy bottomland.

Snow was general over Ireland.

Strum the steel mandolin

then, Mary – plectrum in hand!

We climb out of the clay to shape

this Royal Arch, for St.

Latrobe & Son.  See the faint

wave-trace along its rim (crêpe

for a funeral train; flute-song

transcription).  Grain

melts into wine again –

the living man or woman prong

from earth.  We called it love

& swam into the circle

where snowflakes speckle

dark green live oaks (O crooning dove).

1.16.20

in the shadow of Notre Dame

TO YOU

To you who have walked with me

all along this many poem.

I would translate my diagram

of raven wing into quick algebra.

As daylight stretches into spring

I would head to Beltrami

a worn-out refugee –

Itasca hearts to weld by wring.

The Iron Range is as our life,

cold for sunrise, fire

by dusk.  Evening Star,

Dove-Bird, be thou my wife

                 *

whose effigy is coppery Peg

centered in Big Muddy silt

at Pentecost, green to the hilt.

Cahokia palm (with Easter egg).

She danced in the shadow of Notre Dame

a firebird, on 5/29

with flammable cardboard mural crown

for Apollinaire to remember (at the Somme).

& she wheeled across flat American clay

from West Branch, a circumference

of byzantine raven-sense...

to lift sad Earth toward the Realm of Day.

1.8.20

from a painting by Phoebe Gould

the sense of being right

GREEN EYE

The sense of being right, said Mandelstam

confronted by the Kremlin

goons.  Gumilev’s vision

of sweet radiance (chaste equilibrium

of morning dew).  The restoration

of all things might not be

some dystopic unreality

but a balancing of earth & heaven –

the way a canoe takes wing downstream

like feathery kayak

or golden bubble-track

across the sky (the Ocean River of your dream).

Kennedy, Jack.  A 4-leaf clover

assassinated every day

along with brother Bobby, &

King, Martin Luther (justice-lover).

A green eye floats, engraved over

the pyramid.  I calibrate

the shifting angles of a late

Atlantis – one heartbroken sky-rover

whose tears will magnify an Iris

in transit, like Venus

(from luxuria to lux

aeternam).  She was born for this –

to be the eye-in-hand of muddy clay

transmitting Jonah to Columbia;

to launch a hallelujah

from Monk’s Mound to D.C. (U.S.A.).

11.17.19

where the wheel pivots

VIA FRANCIGENA

My path of J, my Via Francigena.

You can read it on the Q-

line train, between St. Lou

& Monk’s Mound (clay Cahokia).

Choo-choo, J-J, Joanna, Giuliana...

on the milk train way,

your dewy morning ray –

autumnal hoot of helmeted Athena

(hooya-hey).  Fled with her child

from rude dragon.  Nightmare

tyranny (unveiling there

the root of human woe).  So the scald

burns his tattoo into each trumpet call –

the empty mirror of the king

crowns him equal to everything.

So gather him weird into your iris squall,

milky Sophia – gold sunflower

stretched into an almond

ark of mustard limbs (wand

blooming with abject surrender).

Because I love, because I love...

Behold, my child, I have

no wrath.  & in the hive

of clay lips, trace her architrave –

tacit surrender to a violet

sown by storm (below

these wars of villain & hero).

Where the wheel pivots, my river-pilot.

10.26.19

shout it from the rooftops

CLEAR PINE

Hobo was playing solo crane bone flute

like an airy trompette marine

as he watched Henry puzzle on,

muttering his thumpy rhythms en route.

It’s the Union, the Union, Hobo intoned –

as your eye is clear & light

in the pasture breeze – right?

We wrestle with this violence, shark-boned

with vicious avarice – yet Sophie-gentleness

may rule at last, a restoration

of your soul’s volition –

the true child-wish, mild & harmonious

as that lamb-lily in the tiger’s eye;

as Sophie plays her middle Cs

at center of the keys

& swings all 88 into the sapphire sky.

Hope is our natural state – for a grace

bestowed, unbeknownst to us.

Lost & found – like that Tombs

Angel, swimming from the marble face

to lift a prisoner out of the dust –

Rebecca Salome Foster, spun

by Bitter-Lamb into the sun;

drawn out again (by Jeremy Ann) at last...

So Henry clutched the muddy wheel

& turned it, counter-clockwise;

from oceanic Providence

to clear pine river-source... you feel

                       *

it turning, turning... into San Francisco

& a rainbow pigeon-throat

blent with rainbow trout

all natural wonders for that footloose hobo

full of ecstatic spiritual deliverance

marked on his feet & palms

from walking, chanting psalms

all the way to the Delta – joyeux entrance

into azure Gulf, American trumpets

O when the saints

come marching in...

& the clay wheel turns bronze serpents

into flame-gold lambs, whose linking thread

folds limbs into a March on Washington :

where they will wash away corruption

& the violence greed breeds – the dead

shall climb up from their graves, & dance

the Beguine – the beginning again;

the restoration of all men & women

in the clay river-light of Cahokia’s immense

plateau – across Big Muddy from the sky-

blue angle of the Gateway Arch –

that silvery canoe, echoing the arc

of one invisible & omnipresent loving eye :

Aye-Aye of Providence.  Elliptical wafer

lifted from humble bowl...

Hagia Sophia (universal

soul) wearing her limestone life-saver.

8.9.19