Minnesota Mining & Meditation

BRASS COIL

Among the North American tribes

Ojibwe midéwé medicine

was considered, bar none

dark & strong.  Copper for earlobes,

iron for arrowheads.  The beetling sky

barreled down over tamaracks

as wind made tracks

disappear in shifty drifts... hey ey

yo, winter raven!  Iron mother-bird.

Little Henry Limp

climbed out of the stump

of his papa’s grave (obsequious word,

weaker than puff of cottonwood).

Up there in Rez Cemetery

overlooking Mississippi –

him foolish-fond Ski-Neighborhood,

him dream-nest, reconciling every pain.

Down below on the floodplain

wimpy Abel, mean Cain

wrassled for the gilded unclean

scepter of dominion – going insane;

in that negative snow-light

your abject, self-abasing wight

is king of the weak, the outcast, in his rain.

& who shall have the succession, lil Hamlet?

The brass coil Vengeance

around your wrist, the dance

of California, D.C.... where’d my safety net?

10.21.19

Mussolini shoals

MARBLE FACT

Long way from stones of Notre Dame.

We haven’t that feudal allegiance

to a field beyond France.

Bright poppies blister over Belgium

where conundrum of Isis in Iowa

came from.  She is, and was

mysterium of Osiris

on the Mississip – Ezra’s mirror-delta;

hard marble fact planted at West Branch

in Herbert Hoover’s memory

(who would not have taken kindly

to any meat-locker Muss avalanche).

Ezra yodeling the alpine Swiss serene

of his muse Circe Clementine

Vichy (& all the swine

she mesmerized, so spotless clean)

erasing all that history of filthy usury

& black boys handing Bibles

through the bars... Abel’s

your bro, Ez – cain’t you see?

Ah... the shudder of absurdity.

Knife-stab in Marlowe’s eye

– over the Jew of Malta,

of all things!  It cannot be.

It is.  Villon grins in your face,

King Flibberty-Gibbet.

Grimace may be safety net

for every reprobate.  O prodigal race...

5.4.19

 

Reminiscences of 1865

GREY FEATHER

Today we recall the tall gaunt pioneer

with Peruvian cheekbones.

His fifth scene atones

for all that blood shed in anger

at the righting of wrongs; his brief turn

by the Gettysburg graveyard

consumes, with a perfect word,

our kindled rage in bright compassion.

The creaking panorama of all wars

since Cain killed Abel, here

slows, crawls... Ford Theatre –

whose British farce on Yankee manners

stumbles from play to traitor’s hour.

Dusky similitudes...

old King of the Woods

hung from an oak (in Raven’s power)...

the tragic pattern rotates on a string.

Tyro, dangling puppets

tangled on parapets,

shuffles the script – the play’s the thing.

Your clear-eyed servant laughs his last,

cries, Come to my Thanksgiving

feast!  An overlay of evening

wash soaks its river of papyrus bast

in crimson, indigo, & brown.

Still life.  Peto.

Reminiscences on Yew.

Grey feather you must make your own.

4.14.18

a little air

ALMOND MEAL

A little air, a melody

out of Mendelssohn, maybe –

like a wisp of smoke you see

afloat above Red Wing one day.

Like pipes out of Apollinaire,

trompette marine – sole

zigzag rigmarole

of an enigma (serpent’s lair).

You walk the blank maze, Oedipus.

With ghost of Ariadne

by your side.  Keen

pal, forsaken thesis – surplus

collateral, original

betrayal.  Henry Adam’s

dusky twilight madam’s

mad, quiet... a virgin owl

nested in stone Columbia.

Only her bird’s eye

as the crow flies

correlates phantasmagoria

out of the desperate heart of Cain

into clay valves

where muddy stars revolve;

through the dawn labyrinth again

from light, toward light, with light

blazing mild power –

like some firefly bower

mowers glimpse of a summer night

                  *

beneath remote aurora-shower

bearing fathomless delight

miraculous & right

to chastened human hearts in flower.

So I behold Dante & Job,

David the King,

hedged by ironic ring

of instinctual violence – the mob

of envious, avaricious rivals

circling their prey

to make King for a Day

once more.  Florentine hovels

I see transposed to Catlin prairie,

vertiginous Beatrice

mingled with Platte clay.

To the horizon’s elegant Bluejay

molts saturnine Cawtantowwit

with amorous Jenny-

Jonah; they buried be

only to soar in monarch-flight

O harbingers of Milky Way

whose kingdom is an Ocean

Stream – salty communion,

sea-green flock of Liberté!

Out from the massive turning of the wheel,

where Miriam churns the cream

of every starfish dream

into her almond meal (Messiah-seal).

5.16.17

breath of future time

ROSE ISLE

Providence must be frozen now –

near as cold as here.

There, in a corner

of RISD Museum, on the brow

of a painted rise – a late-medieval

child-world.  Horses

& men, innocent & coarse

in their gaudy armor, their carnival

smiles... all in a day’s work,

limns the rustic Master

of the Providence Disaster

(Crucifixion, id est).  The wolf-pack

crowds up a drowsy, lamb-shy

Messiah-King.  His large

eyes scan the callous surge

ringing those toxic letters – IN RI.

We learn dissonance from what blocks

our way.  The enemy

in the script – mythology

played to strength – flows through the locks

like Trickster (shifty for defense).

Jonah swims with the fish.

Jason or Gilgamesh –

the babe in the river-basket – immense

human soul-wheel spun from sloppy

river-clay, to stand

for Mama’s Best (hand

circumnavigating Ocean Sea

                 *
            *          *
                  *

like sunken Galileo Galilee).

Enameled figure, lambent

on his Southern Cross.  Bent

course, awaiting Arimathee.

Merely a muttered word you must

absorb, digest, like that

moist crumb from Josaphat

(bottom of the well of Cain’s mistrust).

Cain is unable to redeem himself.

The Minotaur blockades

all Ariadne’s braids.

Only a feather from Fiore’s shelf –

Joachim’s rapt ghost – might wave

a breath of future time

across Earth’s clumping rhyme

& waft her grey eye through its architrave.

The wooden limbs of Roger Williams,

still petrified atop

his cliff.  Scars crop

our hope – Man’s malice rims

the years with lime – yet still

the copper peristyle

of liberty’s Rose Isle

shines in its matrix (Man’s good will).

1.4.17 

Article in Times science section, about how Neanderthals were not that different from Cro-Magnons (our ancestors), who eliminated them. Cultural memory behind Cain & Abel story? Greek guilt over Trojans?