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