Scent of an ending

Summer fading, a For Sale sign on the house... getting ready to leave Little Rhody.  Yet still remains one rose out back, a very bright one.

PETAL-FAN

September.  One late crimson backyard

rose remains.  Knot

not exactly Ruby, not

Desire – but Steadfast Fire (framed

by maroon foundation of the house).

Afloat upon your thorns,

a crozier, or serpent’s

copperhead – magenta compass,

planetary pole.  Away beyond

all foregone Oregon

disputes – those Diomedan

straits of Fenris-Greyhound –

54º32-by-Four!  Ringing

the International Date

Line – must I hesitate?

Princess in a shower, singing.

We clambered to the clear high room

where SF in a bay flamed

orange bloom – became

entangled like a quipu sum (loom,

cedars).  Weight of one iron anchor

filled that octagon

with spray of azure ocean

when Evening Star fired his tangential

thread of light into shade-womb

of piers – that San Franciscan

adamant, where limestone

Rhodi petal-fan (leaf-shaken hum).

    9.3.15

The occasional ark

Sometimes the macrocosm & the microcosm bump into each other, I guess.  I was reading some old Ravenna Diagrams, about a painting of St. Augustine by Piero della Francesca (I saw it at the Frick), in which Augustine's cloak is a crazy quilt of leather Gospel stories.  This got me thinking about Melville's Queequeg & his tattoos.  & then there was a story today on the BBC about the divided Bering Straits islands, Big and Little Diomede (divided for decades between USA & USSR).

In some sense the earth is a human body... in some nonsense, anyway....

WOLSEY RED

On a sultry 16th, in the month of Caesar

I was ambling down by the Blind

King, on Wickenden –

betwixt the Golden Sheaf (or Fleece) &

her Sheep’s Clothing – like a raven

in wolf gear, or some Pierre

o’Cesca – like That Man there,

following his own tattoos into an Inchon

Dept. of the Interior.

Aboard the good ship Keep-U

(between Racquel & Rue – 

achh...) skirting an ice curtain

somewhere... in a Wolsey red, mate.

Weaving around blind

cataracts, muzzled

shoals – paring bears in the Strait

below White Narrows (it was 1728).

I don’t know why ‘twas done.

The Inuit intuit none

of our designs.  Split Diomede? Great.

They look you in your eye as though

you were in RI!  Weird.

I only see weed (black widow’s

weed).  A coffin exchange came through

the aerial, Mira – maybe

amygdaloid inside?

Keep the white slide

for video, Queequeg. That’s my knee.

9.2.15

Little Diomede Island (Ignaluk)