still life life still

STANDARD MODEL

So summer, Susanna, slowly, slowly

decelerates, among the weeds

& celery, the radish seeds.

&, painted into a corner, quietly

arrives full stop.  Like Peto

still life.  Or Adagietto

seeping on the Lido.

Gradually.  More things, Horatio,

than are dreamt of...  Plumb pleroma

if you can, Hobo –

speak what we feel we know,

somehow.  Premonitions (like a

wind-blown pennant toppling

at Little Big Horn).

Do not compare, Son

of the Morning Star (glass tippling);

you are the only one of a kind

Wakan Tanka.  To come

back from the grave... some

stretch, Hermione.  Out of your mind?

The Blue Morpho of Vladimir

eludes his abstract net –

yet he’ll catch a Hazel.

Bet.  Meet your double in a mirror

(is good luck, not bad).  The way

a doubting Peter folds

a king of hearts, & holds

the diamond.  One homing ray

                *

unlocks the elephant casket (gold-

lined interior, with keys

to inside story)

figured by Jonah, Susanna – double

coracles conveying chronicles

to Finland, now, for you.

Finis.  He’s us, too.

With eyes like Mirror Lakes

in Mendelssohn, down Arthur Street

(the once & future thing).

Two heavy charms, making

an up-quark reddish baryon, Snoopy –

hiccups of a Higgs bison, maybe?

Concerns which we cannot

discern at CERN, just yet.

Professor Nyet beside the Neva...

– Knock it off, Nobby.  That Large

Hadron won’t bunt the Standard

Model for 1000 millionths of

a billionth of a second, pard.  No, Sarge.

I was just napping by the meteor,

that’s all.  It rolled away

(under the elements, maybe).

Not Hobo, not Pope... Columbus, neither.

Those deep brown hazel eyes absorb

Persephone-phenomena...

monarchs on milkweed... ah,

she weeps.  Who spans her glistening orb?

7.7.17

invisible Henry Church

LIGHT WINKS

A cup of sunlight floats across

the cedar octagon

of the gazebo.  June

leads summer nearer endlessness.

A squad of orange day-lilies

freckles the riverbank

where weedy Hobo sank

to the wheat.  His mother’s frieze

of blazing international neon

(banked by green hosta)

outshines them today.

These lily-petals arch a grain-

vault – great grey elevator

rounded with cloud-pillars,

where the safety-net was

knotted, finally – in memory

of J.  Shadow of a tacit planet –

moony-silver Saturn

waiting for the Golden

Age, maybe – foggy parapet

where earth meets sky (grey

overlapping waves

& clouds).  Dante’s grave’s

invisible, behind a clutter of gray

paint-pots, now – beneath a blur

of ink-wings over parchment

– where the bald eagle bent

his beak, pinned torn souls in tar

                  *

each to his or her last judgement.

Hobo looks up through grass

toward his own Ravenna’s

golden youth.  Incandescent cloud-sent

Tadzio, back from the ashes –

gesturing an orant Orient

from shore to shore.  Went

Jesus thus from Galilee, eyelashes

wet with tears (witnessed); so Henry

Tadpole Turtledove

breaches, scattering love

like baby spouting sperm whale (verily).

Invisible Henry Church is vagrant

as St. Franky’s mule –

flutters in a monarch school

through silver double dove-doors, bent

toward Mexico.  When that last Adam

lingers in a weed-garden

for Mary Magdalen,

she coos, Columbian, for him;

it is the beginning of the end.

An ancient raven hovers

over Hobo, bearing leftovers

(crumbs from a wedding).  Mend

your way, she caws.  Men do not know

how swift the river-flow,

how salt Gulf breezes blow.

Light winks from coral reefs below.

6.27.17