so in such straits

GOLD FLEECE

In the blank depths, at nadir of winter.

An acid stain of turpentine.

Peto’s absinthe green

in the still life; drumbeats in the mirror.

Lincoln & Kennedy… Kennedy & King.

Black silk around the photographs.

Time, summarized in epitaphs –

a rocket glare that freezes everything.

& traitors cluster in a mortis-ring

about great Yggdrasil,

composing lizard doggerel

with fangs of trumpery & sting

of fraud.  Shaping a lattice for a type

of self-enclosing anti-Christ,

whose mesmerism none resist –

Rumored Injustice To Be Smashed By Hype.

So in such straits we huddle round the mast.

No longer measure progress

by the steam pipe’s hiss

& whistle of alarms.  It’s in the past,

a memory of island buoyancy

elliptical & calm

we’ll find that palm;

amid light’s brilliance, a transparency

as if an eye looked down from azure dome

as acorn witness for an apple kingdom –

as if the citizens of heaven-home

were you & I… gold fleece of human freedom.

2.12.20

let us come into your clay-borne presence

LIGHT RIVER

I see the radiant city on a hill

& Liberty in her harbor

& the Gateway... & ardor

burns, like paint – to make a mural,

maybe?  For one of our post offices?

Floppy Hobo in’s gazebo

full of summer, O

& stubborn weeds, ripe frailties...

& who will deliver us from this cauldron

of planetary woes?

Veiled Isis knows,

out there in West Branch – she’s not sayin’.

Her ghost throws a shadow wherever she goes.

O let me come into your presence,

Lord – let me see your face!

Joanie Magdalen grins... Light River flows.

Her uberous figure under Hooverville

remembers slow clay, &

quickens every which way –

warming the shoulders of your chill

& peregrine companions.  & gadzooks!

She spooks even the Tyche

inside Île de la Cité –

tattooing her airy John Hancocks

to every labyrinthine burg on earth.

A little candle in your soul

flickers through mole-

corridors, Mayflower – brightens your berth.

6.18.19

looking out a window

HER STATUE

I’m getting older, while the day’s

becoming lighter.  As

in Mary Gould’s last

watercolor (Bardsey Island, Wales) –

looking out a window from brown shade

of cave-like room, toward

April greensward.

Frail hand... pale grass, overlaid

with stone outcrop... old walls, old cross

(Romano-Celtic maze).

Delicate spring promise

from an ancient vault (Natasha’s

limping that way now, with me).

Her temple’s labyrinth –

sea-goddess, Amaranth –

only a sheep-door, west of Galilee;

only this frozen winterworld

all thatched with foot-

prints (near that ice-hut

where Henry’s burr-man hurled

like a cedar waxwing to mistaken ice).

Crabapple food for golden

beaks... spiritual gates, folding

for abject mortals (Minnesota nice)

into a paper bird from Paris, maybe –

Apollinaire’s turban

or Marianne’s tricorn

mayhap – dancing a crane-dance (starry

                    *

sacrifice) with shuttle-pagination.

Ariadne on the golden floor

rhyming with Morning Star

east of Cahokia – her crown of corn

lifting like Liberty (or Spirit

of St. Louis) for a

constellation (Columbia) –

gray-winged Jonah of an old planet

molting to Thunderbird out of the new.

Each Troy-town so will show

her Julia, Iulus, Juno –

or Sophie, prancing here and now

across the parapet of innocence

like dew upon the brow

of childhood’s rainbow –

O bright helm of human sentience!

Behold a Union, fused in fire & light

of soul-transfiguration –

future-human-nation

people, ever-living, stony-bright!

You see that Gate as through an old

& shady window, in a bed-

sit somewhere (in the Hebrides?).

Old stones, light green, grass-emerald...

sprung out of the eternal vault

like Livingstone out of jungle,

where fiery spirits mingle

in a playful dance... – her statue, Walt!

12.27.17