through Narragansett smokehole

AGATE LAMP

A peaceful evening in late April

the trees barely budding

in mild light   while brooding

darkness rings   the besieged people

& this dissonance of visible   invisible

an indivisible fire   smoldering

criminals & saints   revealing

callous inhumanity    with humble

solidarity   courageous   all-compassionate

& in my flimsy gazebo

octagonal coracle or   Argo

with Sophie’s wind-chime   over the gate

delicate oak-leaf butter-knife design

tingling in the calm air   O

here in my Ariadne-lair   where

a Chartres J coils  toward her Eschaton

& my whisper follows Cautantowwit

through Narragansett smokehole 

southwest, southwest   while a soul-

hart sails back   to her monarch nest –

that circling square dance of Ocean beams

where the spirit of Jessie Ophelia

& Juliet Ravlin   abide in Thee   &

Eternity, O Eternity! cries Roger Williams

& you lift your agate lamp, Psyche

like a fiddlehead   in Holy-Land

& the soeur-coulombe of the Son

of Man   swerves   with a shining eye

4.27.20

searching the pipeline

GREEN FLEURETTE

With a guttering cigarette-stub candelabra

planted on his tin pan rim

old Hobo H., yea verily him,

sets off, vagrant pilgrim, on his last hurrah.

& recalls that fond octagonal gazebo

where many a summer

found him (quizzical plumber)

searching the pipeline for Cy Manitou.

High & low, & up & down the river

led by that whistling flit

of Ray Caw-somuchwit (tight

Gansett smokehole, domed in Ravenna)

Hobo went on, a-glide like some water-bat

round that chartless labyrinth

amazed with gold, & crème

de menthe – a little green fleurette

upsprung ‘mid scattered fallen leaves

& spinning like a gyroscope

cross-threaded by Hope

so’s to balance what him heart conceives.

For that whisper-caw of Wakan Tanka

cries – all the temples of Solomon

& all the domes of Justinian

are but the models of a living Anchor,

planted ‘twixt the temples of your mind

beside the hearth-fire in your heart.

O speaking brook, where rivers start!

Handy RI aerie (in your eye to find).

3.26.20

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

in the days of Ivan the Terrible

AYE-AYE

In the days of Ivan the Terrible

Sultan fought Emperor

& culture fought culture.

Faith was fervor, & power, trouble.

Lately we don’t have that problem.

Everyone agrees the state

is not about the potentate

& not about God.  It is a system.

It is a system of checks & balances

blah blah yes yes… but where,

where is the heart?  It’s there,

Hieronymo Geronimo (maybe in Providence).

I remember that whiff of salt air

off the silhouette of Roger.

A flow from Berkeley’s wager…

how Jonah might be the universal tar.

Each one of us within that law

equal as feather of Maat

or smoke of Cautantowwit

(bright sunset glow of wonder & awe).

Henry Hurricane sleeps in his dream

somewhere in Minneapolis.

Maybe taking a piss

in a treepot, on Nicollet (off the beam).

His circus is circumference.

& maybe we are Hagia

Sophia with a million…

aye.  Aye-aye, captain.  Silentium.

3.9.20

lingo & experience

SMOKING PYRE

O the glittering golden champagne world

the sparkle of human Honigwein!

& Henry skulking on the margin

ever – shy & sluggish, owlish Thunderbird.

At the intersection of Congdon & Morris

in the Honig house, in Providence

whereat Berryman lay, once

with his books, bourbon & cigarettes

a smoking pyre of lingo & experience

where the poet stands – a matrix

Jessifying the cosmos (X

raptor).  & Henry maunders after... silence

& gravity his only friends, he thinks

(1132 feet down, beneath

132 6th St).  Bequeath

his Sloop John B. to them steeply drinks,

drafts of your Ocean State, O bookish

Cesca-Fay!  Where Cautantowwit

calumeets Columbia, knit

together in your Seine – sweet swish-

mel Arno-Androscoggin – rosy net!

As the planet in the distance,

like an intricate replica, spins

its miniature J (illustrious Celt)

you cut your figure on the dancing floor

(smooth sliding all-akimbo

smile) like a capital C, or O

out of Jericho – my Tosca to thy Carib shore.

1.3.20

an ocean swell

ACORN-RIM

This is that ancient harvest night.

Rhode Island harvesting

the sea.  A Newport wedding

(Jacqueline & Jack) at rocky height

(of Sachuest). & as the whale

harvesting the sea as well

is no less an ocean swell,

& Jonah is his pearl – still hale

& whole, alive from deeps of hell –

so Henry might rise again

from his own carapace of sin

(that shimmery-mirror Minotaur-spell).

Hobo-Falstaff lurks beneath a branch

of raven-wood (Cautantowwit,

Caws-too-much-wit).  Stone-set

into the Seeker’s providential avalanche –

one violet for the junk-jewelry state.

The salt air clears his head.

One Spirit wakens all the dead,

he chants – one Dream outshining potentate

& pyramid.  He nurses Henry back to health

like Whitman with his milky muse;

Abe & martyr Martin fuse

into the circle of their commonwealth –

a coracle or ark of Liberty

circumferencing azure shores,

whose acorn-rim Henry restores

to dappled shade (bright almond eye).

11.1.19

dialect of high & low

CLAY NAVEL

Literature might be political.

The dialect of high & low,

the pyramidical Pharaoh

& Erich Auerbach in Istanbul...

slaves muttering (familial)

athwart the exaltations

of regal Lion-Suns

& River-Moons (extra-terrestrial)

their jocular contra-dance lingo.

Dantean, obsolete

vernacular (obsidian);

mosaic featherweight, grave Galileo.

Everything formed from nothing... out

of a pinhole in the universe.

Clay navel – Osiris hearse

called up by current, cattail flute.

Whorls of tree-rings mantle each mortal eye.

Isis in Iowa,

Blackstone of raven-sigh –

Cautantowwit, under the Milky Way.

The tacit origin.  Your motherland,

O King.  Incipient

restoration, air apparent...

transparent equilibrium (beatitude).

Near the steel vault of St. Louis.

In the seine of the fishermen,

over the Mississippi.  Sign

from tree-logs, Jessie Ophelia... always.

6.23.19

my circus is circumference

AGATE PATH

A camouflaged Eye of Providence

hovers over the pyramid

like an acorn emerald

planted in oak-leaf munificence.

The Geneva Drive is in Ravenna.

Its clock ticks in a circle...

twin circles... minuscule

mosaic tesserae resolve into Divina

Paradiso.  So Jesus-Orpheus the shepherd

pipes Eurydice

free of that ceremony –

Flee, Morning Star, into thy molten Word!

So Raven-Cautantowwit mounts up

like chunk of cave-shade

out of Narragansett glade.

History will halt here (full-stop).

The wheels... the wheels... from Sepulcher

to Joachim’s Eagle...

a 33, at harpoon angle

spins gravitation for a falling star

into reverse, Hartley.  Your 9th-month

manger – energy

transformer – tyranny

to liberty – Caesar to pigweed (amaranth)...

in our eye, blind soothsayer.

Dreamer.  Beware the Ides

of March, jewel!  The tides

wind up your record player

                 *

wrapping American wolf-hides

against endless winter,

before pale blue Easter

cracks the shell’s snowline... abides.

Two boats in Gloucester rock against the pier.

Twin meditations on a feast –

Thanksgiving yeast

to lift this clay into a Gaiasphere.

Light leaning down from high Polaris

filters into Catholic Oak;

Blackstone’s wheel-spoke,

planted in Pawtucket – ferrous

axle, trimmed by Roger Williams –

fortified by Edward Coke

to be King Charlie’s nook

when he eludes Roundheads (skipping exams

for exile’s exile – double-cross).

I’m whorling a rusty-russet

agate path, Juliet –

for you (muttered George Henry Loess).

Out of circuiting clay, no less...

out of the mid-month

warbling of Bluejay (29th

of May, no doubt).  Camelot is

something else.  The Lady in the Lake

of the Isles raises

Excalibur aloft... says

Hiawatha is a sacrifice (oak-thirst to slake).

3.1.19

the ordinary Union

KNIT WOOL

                 Eternity, O Eternity! That is our business.

                                                       – Roger Williams

She watches crows play in the sky

above her balcony.

Her dregs of memory

transmute to gaiety, give death the lie.

Cautantowwit was Raven-Lord

of Narragansetts.  Old

Canonicus told

Roger how dead souls were borne toward

Mexico, far off southwest...

Rog quilled it down.

That chief of great renown

was kind to him.  Knit wool is best

around head, limbs & heart

when winter ice descends.

I’m dreaming, friends.

One campfire (circling) is all my art.

The Red Wing river-clay is heavy,

as my mother knows.

O the harsh blows

that fall like thunder (Romeo, Julie)...

The body’s weight is catenary

Golden Gate (so

Jasper shows).  Blow,

Manitou... bring back the glory

of the ordinary Union.  It shall be

– when we return to Thee,

from sea to shining sea –

uncommon good (benevolent Eternity).

11.29.17

matrix of the capital

TINY ANCHOR

Charles L’Enfant painted a watercolor

panorama, 14 inches

by 7 feet long, which shows

the Continental Army by the Hudson River

at Verplanck’s Point (1782).

Its curator (Phil Mead)

once noticed what appeared

to be a mini-tepee notched in view –

looking vaguely familiar...

why?  That very canvas

tent (George Washington’s)

was standing in a nearby corner

of his own museum.  From tiny sketches

mighty plants may grow –

L’Enfant would later sow

the plans for D.C.’s marble stretches

(George’s tent of meeting thus

the matrix of the capital).

We are all infants, after all.

Whence comes this rolling wondrous

theatre in the round?  Each regiment

on the accompanying chart

plays its own part –

a seahorse anchor figuring Rhode Island

(Providence for African, Native 

American recruits).

Even Okean has roots –

one sign given, that we might live

                  *

like Jonah (which means turtledove)

descending, by enormous

& galactic routes

from lambent & egalitarian beehive

on high – the very cosmopolitan

& chaste kingdom of God –

chaste, as out of Novgorod

by way of Osip (Mandelstamian)...

Each local soul circles toward Providence

as moth toward firelight.

Only fly right

into the center of her blazing salience –

you’ll see the laws of city & country

meld to conformity

with that great mutuality

Martin proclaimed – God’s wakan charity.

                  *

This lonely river-path of Hobo

down the sky’s time-lapse

touches a key, perhaps.

His mother’s clay is rolling, so;

out of that gray whale’s brow of sadness

flows a solidarity

escried by Raven – see?

Au mer... À Mère I caw (southwest,

southwest)... Cautantowwit, or Noah’s

pilot, feeding crumbs...

deep distant drums

of Thunderbird.  Silence (Cahokia’s).

11.15.17