mini-Mississippi meditation

WINDY CURRENT

They found a body in the broken ice

upstream from Franklin Bridge.

Nearby, JB leapt the edge

50 Epiphanies ago.  Minnesota Nice

reminder of mortality, this cold

Ash Wednesday.  & who

shall rescue me from this

body of death?  You, Lord?

Let each one find you, mighty to save.

My own keeled-over Mardi Gras

diversions end Mid-Barataria.

O rheumy battery of barratry – behave!

Half-sunk, in debt to fraud… Old Ironsides,

our near-abandoned Constitution

drifts toward Mars Lagoon –

graveyard of hulking Liberties, Columbias…

I heard Brad Barth, & maybe Latrobe

have shaped a mini-Mississippi

en masse.  Delta recovery

with restoration of the entire globe

– at 1/65th scale, using simulated sand –

in view.  Musk-earthy angel

of Odetta, oversing y’all

sluiceways – my diversions too; your hand

stroking the banjo-strings, your voice…

one grain of sand.

Let not Pharaoh’s demand

deter you from your bitter cross

                    *

– a better choice, for man nor woman

noir nor blank, there be nought

but this flashing pivot –

fiery chariot, all-bearing, San Franciscan

stigma tattoo – all-loving happy ghost

& live-oak everlasting shade

reconciling all things made

& unmade (windy current, whirling host).

Water currents, pressure & flow

(scale-model of congregated

clover coracle, 200’ x 70’)

up to the Chapel of Eternal Now.

You just want to get in & start playing

with it.  We can (she sings)

no longer accomplish things

by damming things off.  What saying,

Great Spirit?  Hwæt?  There was silence

for about six hours

(prelude to thunderblast)

when ailing Alighieri, heart gone quiet as

a babe, asleep upon her mother’s breast

gazed up into the rainbow dome

at Sant’Apollinare.  You come

to me gliding, from Sabbath rest

in your almond canoe, Jessie-Jesu…

out of the gemstone casket

where 4 streams exit

like the Nile, from Ethiopia… O Hallelu.

2.26.20

from G. Ronald Murphy, S.J., Gemstone of Paradise, p. 187

dream song for Mardi Gras

WIDE SWINGS

In the remote silence of your dream

little Ojibwa cowboy,

every word, every sigh

your lips would bend to the birch beam.

Each syllable would lift up smoothly

like wing or wave, to join

the sarabande procession

flashing tiny stars in their night-cloud sky.

The piety of Aeneas or of Abraham

is tinctured with the same

topaz humility; the fame

of Black Elk flares no different requiem;

& Hobo’s yearning in the Bottomland

& Henry’s striving at the source

obey the same bone-flute discourse –

to verify one sweet-tempered command.

& like a low B-flat trombone bass line

out of some Delta funeral-song

the aura of her Don’t-be-long

with magnetism of her Love, B-mine

goes rippling counter-clockwise, from St.-J

to D.C. piles of masonry

& back to Lake Itasca –

& like mustard monarch or viceroy

lifts tender, glancing & reflective wings

to meet your own, brave

Jessie-Isis – clear sea-wave.

Peace pipes over the Golden Gate, wide swings.

2.25.20

up in Montrose Park

PINE-SMOKES

The war to end all wars was done.

On May 29th, 1919

Sir Arthur Eddington

tested heavy light, suspended

in a thread around the moon-black sun;

so gravity bent clay

toward refining accuracy.

Black Elk extends to six directions

silent gratitude & recognition,

just as an icon speaks

in speechless pine-smokes

or a painting glows with valedictory

emotion.  Around the summer solstice

rose-phosphorus sunset

seals the monuments’ regret

in Washington – western promise

magnifies & coalesces, in a microcosm

(up in Montrose Park,

at Avon Place, by River R).

That armillary zodiac, or star-prism

revealing violence, imperial dominance

(diagonal to its redeeming

countersign) – entangling

mn-mutter, amid all circumstance…

sweet Angel, levitant above the cancer

of the Capital; fleet-

footed Evening Star, bright

Pocahontas (waterlogged Delta, triangular).

2.24.20

to shade the children from the burning sun

my Hobo Code coffee cup

WAVE-THRUMS

I’m coming to the crown of the river-tree

& the mouth of the copper serpent

following Hobo, where she bent

toward the Delta of American poetry.

& there’ll be singing & dancing, each clown 

hootin’-&-a-hollerin’

& dressed up like an Indian

to celebrate the simple joy of Union.

& I’ll trail behind Benjamin Latrobe

the good mason of Washington

taking after his dear son

to build a floating city from mosquito-glob;

I’ll watch that Phoenix-bird arise

like an evening Jonah,

spreading her ghost-persona

wings from Frisco Bay to Providence

to shade the children from the burning sun

& fly them to a new playground

where wave-thrums sound

their steady oceanic Truth for everyone

whose eyes merge in the Sophie-bark

curving over the Churnagogue

(octagonal pine-log

hover-canoe; dynamic-ceramic arc

empowered by the muscled wheel

of hopeful human clay)

– J-stroking toward an Agape

aflow to share, to guide, to lift, to heal.

8.20.19

heights & depths

LOVE LEADS

In the phosphorus dwelling-place of the Most High

Dante, murmured Hobo

will I be able to hear

that melancholy train-horn cry

so-so long gone?  His pal Henry

felt that ol’ pulsing flame

of lonesombrero, becomin’

churnagogue (centripetal clay) –

that emerald lichen-moss of Giuliana,

flanking a time-hewn sepulcher

with it still whorl

of tesseratic Emperors & Empresses... ah

Psyche, from those regions which

are Holy-Land!  Smoky

incense signals eye-

in-hand, Galla (yon casket-niche).

The soul is feminine.  The turbulent

churnagogue is melting

galaxies, in buttermilk –

hamlets of sacred discontent;

YHWH, detached from patriarchal kings

unveils a weird Coatlicue-

possessed & epileptic Dante-

muse... Venusian fire – & Jonah sings

Love leads us up like moth to flame

from steel-train Iron Range

down to Delta... strange

diamond, Latrobe (El MLK mandala-frame).

7.29.19

serpent in the clay

SLOW WHEEL

Henry leans on Hobo, stumbling along

the river path.

Sullen serpent of wrath,

her mud-green bronze glistening

mutely as she goes, her banks

tight-lipped, angry with Man,

older than Man.  The sun

barely registers on shady flanks

slipping by, tongue flickering.

The plot thickens.  Clouds

darken where crowds

hearken – listen! – princes, bickering...

& who shall have the succession?

A cast of characters –

kings, clerics, warriors –

mime St. Vitus in scared possession –

sleepwalk their sacrificial totem

for a perennial repetition

of the same (again, again).

& armies marshal around Bethlehem

to protect the kingdom from its violence;

a convenient woman shall

be found, to dance the ritual

in their place (a chosen princess)

& her cacophonous Parisian Rite of Spring

will set the keynote for a war

to end all wars (for

a while).  Meanwhile the black spring

                     *

of Rio Mississippi coils in anger

on the Iron Range, under

the North Star.  Thunder,

Hobo, Henry says.  It’s Woodpecker

come back – alight near Red Wing,

so they say.  What

does it mean, old mutt?

He muttered back : it don’t mean anything

to many, Hen.  She walks beside you

like an iron canoe,

the spiral J of Synagoga –

like that Micòl in Ferrara, like a shadow

of Our Lady.  Spiritu – loving you,

who don’t deserve her –

sacrificed for Minotaur

on every altar, from Cahokia to now.

Then Henry saw a little emerald

almond leaf, shaped

like a boat... wrapped

in a river-whorl, spun, twirled

downstream.  The Delta beckoned,

where dark Mère Lousine

grinned from the deep.  Lean

over some more, Henry, Hobo intoned.

There’s Benjamin Latrobe & Son,

sunk like a foundation

in the Gulf.  An American

sun blinked, dark.  A slow wheel spun.

7.21.19

cloud & catalpa, Minneapolis

Cloud & Catalpa, Minneapolis (Martin Johnson Heade, 2019)

GRASS CLOVERLEAF

Everything grew simpler in that high room

overlooking Jerusalem

when he added up the sum

& gave us his Thanksgiving poem.

The apostolic laying on of hands

was just an afterthought

Mary Magdalen taught

to keep the Presence each one understands.

The knot held.  The silverweb

floresced, in centaur arrow-

shots – from Antioch to

Thebes, up to remotest Gad-Gab

(Ethiopia).  Axled on coffin

of coffins.  Buried deep

as Noah’s ark.  Sleep,

King of Kings (like everything human).

This gemstone of the Southern Cross

shines like diamond

out of emerald

almond – mossy quaternion, grass

cloverleaf (in shape of heart).

That little tree will root

where all the branches start,

where all the rivers roll (sky-girt

perpendicular – little Everytwig

leaning against current)

– unto that iron agent

sluicing the Delta to a brazen fig

                    *

shriveled, dry (as is the way with figs).

Yet Wisdom is justified

in all her children.  Hide

now, O Man – Ouragan digs

into clay.  Rotating so solemnly,

she shakes the bone-limbs

from their joints, skims

lightly over coastal property

– only to uproot, destroy.  Bideth

nor roof nor door, Tornado!

Like the Iron Age you know

twisted to shattering shadow... Lilith-

Crocodile, climbing from Delta

to muddy matrix of 

St. Louis.  Scorned Love

twisted into dust-mandala –

substantial b-flat of the galaxies

stilled, played in reverse.

The little tree of Ursus

Minor – little star, catalpa’s

iris-blooms – starts wheeling

counter-clockwise.  Clover

culminates your

integral almond-canoe.  Sing,

Muse, Oblomov-grail of prairie earth!

The great wheel turns.

Jonah’s corn-maze yearns

Restoration... (Miriam’s rebirth).

6.28.19

the American dreamwork

NAVE RESTORATION

The American dreamwork seems to grow

of itself, like a vagrant

acorn’s buried descendant

branches roots into veins of air, so –

leaving yourself behind, then

as in a park playground

at dusk, all around

echoing shouts of kids having fun

within the green lamps of those trees

& the circle of daydreaming

grownups, their evening

rest emerging at last – the iron wheeze

of the swing-set beginning to mesmerize

with its creaky metronome –

& you have a premonition of home,

like a matryoshka doll of paradise

or a houseboat nested in a boathouse.

American as they don’t get?

Anonymous as a planet

without name, yet – Isis, Osiris...

A figure stands at the dream door.

They put the body there?

Now it’s not anywhere.

He gone, she gone (to tell them more).

Hobo Ulysses glides toward New Orleans,

St.-Jeanne of the Delta,

Jonah.  Coracle fella,

acorn Cap.  Nave restoration’s what it means.

5.17.19

Ojo de Dios

SOURCE-VIBRATION

The iconoclast in his canoe

oars his poetry

(defying gravity)

upstream.  I’m following you,

he murmurs, to the light

behind his back.  One

source-vibration

senses waves out of her tight

spring, jetting toward the Delta.

The prophet’s out of season,

Henry, mutters Jason

Bluejay (Hobo’s twin).  ‘Strooth, sirrah.

Fake saviors, antichrists will rise

like worms out of the mealy

rot, promising Envy

great Vengeance.  Where the body lies,

there vultures will assemble.

The Boar will tusk the Prince,

fill Earth with violence...

foundations of the planet tremble.

His canoe, the eye of Providence

(Ojo de Dios) whirrs

to emerald headwaters.

One pine, one fiddlehead give evidence –

your vernal J spirals intelligence

of love (bright quickness lost

& found).  Swift Holy Ghost

Rio pours restoration, recompense.

11.19.18

Once upon a time

Once upon a time there lived a Mississippi riverboat captain, named Mr. Lawrence, who had two daughters, Jessie Ophelia and Cleopatra Desdemona (not kidding)... Jessie Lawrence married my great-grandfather, George P. Gould.

DELTA QUEEN

The hobo-poem stumbles out of Itasca,

a somno-ambulant mutter

just west of Superior

like a Nile-canoe in Minnehaha

or Thesée-en-Argo, lost at sea

in a maze older than time.

A stone-barrow, or lime-

burnt spacetime spruce-vortex (little tree

Apollinaire chased down in Paris

listening to Stravinsky

on the 29th of May).

Distant thunder... blessed senseless

mote.  What acorn happiness

coils beneath necrolithic

Moscow?  What lithe

Pocahontas limns Potomac offices?

Lightning rives gnarled raven limbs.

One glint from gold iris

shakes the paralysis

from icebound Neva aisles – low hymns

drone from limestone fish-caverns;

there is no place on earth

where Psyche’s sighing hearth

cannot ray lamplight (ask Jules Verne,

or Edgar Allan – ask St. Joan).

My Delta Queen glides on

toward perihelion

engulfing sorrow in her zephyr-zone.

4.18.16

What's in a sine wave ?

PALM WAVE

This milky February sun

foretells another spring.

Still far-off – winging

eyebrow-arch reflection

of a snow-blue almond bridge.

Yet near... a looming

whisper (out of Red Wing,

maybe) in your ear.  Sweet pledge

of union, set sail southward

by wattle-crane basket

to mossy reed thicket

below Delta (belle Campagnarde).

Knot-eye of Popeye raptor-

sailor, here trans-

mogrified to mildest

peahen-cockerel (Eeyore-

Sophia, high over Frisco Bay).

Equable & everpresent

omni-beneficent

orthogonal well of charity

infusing one & all (mandala-

dome, dominion’s

doom).  Everyone’s

chest de trésor – heart’s ah,

life’s oh... amended Manitou

of Man.  For me & you,

within the vernal blue

of ocean wave (palm-feather true).

2.1.16