near the pin of the spoke

ALMOND BOAT

Love & harmony are the spring of song

murmured the little holm oak

near the pin of the spoke

& sanction of same, she sapped along;

so I task you, febrile Henry Hobo,

tiny A-grade acorn, flow.

So down to Gulf of Mexico

adrifted on the current, shady Penny-O

& me.  Time was an arc of aquamarine,

with cloud-ships for dreaming;

transumptive Ocean, circuiting

the galaxies, checkmating history (unseen,

almost).  Our boat was an ovoid ovum

chicken-coop (Rhode Island

Red) ruddered by hand –

she wove you liberty & welcome

for your immersive infancy of joy –

sails belling with sweet air

of solidarity & friendly care,

infinity of each one in our eye.

& Penny dreamt alongside, inside me

in the same language, dark

& light – Lady of the Ark

closer than whisper, vaster than sea.

Like Beatrice or Eurydice or Mary,

she’s Iris in her almond boat –

shimmering beyond this moat

gripped by the Minotaur, to set us free.

2.7.20

train to Boston

FATE-LINES

Hobo follows his instinct to the river.

A serpentine circulation,

labyrinth – heart’s burn.

Romans might haruspicate the liver

of an ox, or note the forays of a raven

like smoke-signals overhead;

Hobo lingers with his own dead

Providence photos – train to Boston

or that old blind man who walks the plank

straight off the cliff (at Prospect

Park).  Ghosts intersect.

Eurydice in San Fran hits a blank

wall of blue salt water.  Prince Henry Hal

uproots the better part of soul

to be the bard imperial –

shelving himself with racks of Fleurs du Mal.

To be refuge for troubled consciences,

Rhode Island was.  & was.

Hobo works with materials

by eye-in-hand (fate-lines, hunches);

commissioned for a wedding-song

of earthen pots (Cahokian)

& Morning Star – where one

Virgo-conjunction plants her Gateway prong

the Rio del Espiritu Santo will merge

St. El with Muddy Waters

& Ravenna’s virgin martyrs

with a N’Orleans fanfare... cosmic splurge.

12.10.19

one dusty pair of loafers

GOLDEN DOOR

A cloudy day in June.  The silver-

green hearts of cottonwood

shape an eave of old

whispers overhead – over

Hobo’s sleepy crown.  He drifts

along the riverbank

like wind.  Who to thank

for this vagrant splendor?  Lifts

one eye to meet mauve milkweed

flowerets.  The milky

pod will land later.  He

recalls the King of Butterflies – his seed

of fire, smoking bloody thorns

out of the House of God.

Beyond Land of Nod

dawn twilight hovers between horns;

the Minotaur, hideout collapsed,

glances sideways now –

he’s facing you, Hobo.

Ennui & self-disgust snap

shut his labyrinthine face.

An intellectual

despair (material

forces define our fate) will place

disconsolate Ophelia

& lonely Juliet

upon the parapet

of Golden Gate.  Barefoot pariah-

poet joins them (leaves behind

one dusty pair of loafers).

Ice coats the Minotaur’s

sealed lips.  Hobo’s refined friend

Henry wavers on river-ridge.

He breathes deep.  Steadies

himself.  Watches eddies

spread calmly (from Stone Age).

A tiny flint, like mustard seed

planted its yellow point

in Henry’s mother-heart.

The soul is feminine, she said,

her clay says welcome to the plant.

A fishy pie plate

              *

framed between what

look like Twin Cities’ restaurant

cartwheels?  Double helix, welded

with rows of keys... inside

a box of buffalo hide... ?

Disc-knot, or gyroscope... plaid

4-leaf clover in a Star of David

spun toward peace...

Frisbee (call the police)

or flying saucer?  Air-bridged

harbor, so she sang – a lightning

prism.  New Colossus

in the live-oak moss –

her beacon-hand.  Smiles, welcoming.

Grain of the laborers trains Henry’s

unison.  His ancient sigh

for Juliet-Eurydice

brings grey-eyed Emma Lazarus

out of a purple sea – her Liberty.

The seed of fire is Love –

soul’s only treasure-trove;

find Her & you have found Me

too, murmured the grey ring-dove

whose cloudy wings unveil

a glinting copper seal –

bright penny from the King’s alcove

(of Lincoln logs & Memphis marble

made).  Now Henry sleeps

in Charley-oak – he keeps

the crown of Manitou arboreal

while Hobo swims down Milkweed River

branch to branch, & limb

to limb.  Says, Go find him

who seeks you in deep-end despair.

Love’s gyroscopic equilibrium

(from seed-beginning

to rose-blooming

end) is manifest Wisdom;

she dances like a cloverleaf

until you turn with her

into that Golden Door –

her almond Agape (undying life).

6.29.17

Black holes have rings of light straw hair

SCRIMSHAW TRINKET

                    It’s the past that tells us who we are.  Without it

                    we lose our identity.  –  Stephen Hawking

A raven carried heaven-manna

out of the ark to lonesome

Jonah – him just come

from under the whale-rib (manna

overboard) stranded on sand

off Galilee, RI –

& it made him cry.

Those crispy cackles he couldn’t

understand – like low gull-talk

sent through a black-

hole paradox;

light straw climbed an orange rock

from the event horizon up to

null infinity –

it was all catenary,

looped in one wave-smile... – who?

Gravity? – or Grace?  Eurydice,

maybe.  (It was her cave.)

Spoiled meat you crave

is portioned by division – say,

two doves for every plowman’s mule.

Queequeg in his casket

(like a scrimshaw trinket)

penned our sempiternal Rule –

each rustic Penny in the well of night

was tender out of love.

Her vernal sparkle-trove

is polyglot – Euphrasia (eyebright).

6.8.16

Monk's Mound (Illinois)

Inland sea

BREATHING SEA

Old Hobo glances back upstream

as the spring bluets form

an inland sea – a swarm

of peacock eyes (out of a dream-

song dome) across the autumn grass.

Retrospective.  Phoebus

in an ochre crevasse,

Magdalenian cave-compass.

Your yearning for Eurydice,

so youthful-hungry, Henry –

out of want, not plenty –

ignorant (in your blind way).

An oscillation of the sun

and moon.  The Q. of Heaven

looks out from her den,

mild lioness... dusky horizon.

Henry, by his veiled statue,

thinks on Beatrice

(pine-green eyes, sea-

grey).  His melancholy’s ocean-blue.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem!  How

I would have gathered you...

the soul’s an orphan zoo

without the smile of Manitou.

A little tree in Galilee

still rustles in the breeze

from a breathing sea.  She’s

calling you, sailor.  Be free.

4.14.16

We Were There

PSYCHE-GLOW

                                      i.m. MLK

That other Henry, in seclusion

(District of Columbia).

Mourning Eurydice

veiled, so – Isis in stone.

The chaos of the dynamo,

the violence of men

(Mont St.-Michel)... sun

clouded by confusion.  Apollo

camouflaged as Hobo now

flickering cigarettes

into the Seine – alights

in Memphis, on a garbage scow.

Columbia, Columbia, murmurs

the mourning dove, come back.

Gray sketch in black

& white, along the watchtower.

One ghost dance treads this lambent maze

draws wool into a knot

or chord of charity.

Her milky Manitou is wise.

The profane land, amnesiac

is lifted into tune

by memory of one

who went before – his trouble on his back

your trouble too.  A Psyche-glow

to orient the west

toward east, the past

into a future peace – heart’s overflow.

4.4.16

In the summer of 1968, my father took me with him on a trip to D.C., where we went down to the National Mall to be part of the crowd at "Resurrection City" - the encampment of the Poor People's Campaign, which had been initiated by MLK.  I went through some of my dad's papers after he passed away last spring, and found this pennant.

Among the people that you meet

CLAY PERSEPHONE

The fresh air by the Mississippi

that glides to St. Louis

from here – muddy promise

of snowmelt, my clay Persephone.

Among the people that you meet

– around a picnic table

in Duluth, or at that fabled

native board, beside the seat

of Massasoit (near Plymouth Rock) –

one person hovers at

your back, discovers what

you need before you ask (more bock,

mayhap).  Like plucky Jeanne d’Arc

– or her twin brother, Tom

o’Hawk – she flies from drum

to flask like Nessie shatters dark

Loch Ness, grise foudre scorching east

to west.  She’s Omnipresence

in pauvre disguise – Franciscan

ass with horsepower (a Falcon-Beast).

Stepping forth into canoe

from granite lintel, W.

looks out toward you,

Eurydice de San Francisco –

straight through steely Gateway Arch

midway from sea to sea.

Notes your grave levity

melds plenitude – lark tuning larch.

2.24.16

Where the crooked sumacs are

BACKWARD THUNDER

The Redeye of these freight cars’

heavy backward thunder

over rubidium crossbars’

X.  Where the crooked sumacs are –

their creaky grey akimbo-structures

(rusty caducei).  Amorpho-

phallus Titanium?  No,

not quite... but ruddy, like Osiris-

Oedipus (up 3-Way Highway,

where the pylons meet).

Eddy Parallactic,

relatively paralytic – all that whey

so massive, bending light around

Caesar’s own seizures,

jade embrasures

(pyramidical, tyrannical, profound).

The iron Bruegel earth turns so,

in snowy dunes.  Until

one feathery perpendicular

percolates up (with bleaker crow).

Light eddied, slow (28, 29...)

where a spring coils

moss-green (oeuil

of Bosch, in Kansas City sun);

where Iris plants meek sovereignty

by Eero-Eeyore Gate – &

Eurydice, come late

May, rose... (tiny Iona tree).

2.2.16

MN Arboretum (Jan. 2016)

Henry's Sheba (down south)

RORSCHACH FIGURE

This gaunt, towering, aged pine,

adorned with a scattering

of obsolete Christmas

lights, draws a straight sober line

lifting its crow’s nest to point

of perihelion (invisible sun

behind galactic one).

My ghost-ship creaks with accent

grave along her seventh wave

(sky-reckoning) – southern

constellation, borne

on Magellanic surf.  An octave

mutely unfolds – an origami

Chinese lantern, spun

outward (on tiny silken

struts) into a diamond Chi-

Rho maze – Rorschach figure

of raven, or monarch

brain (Venn-Neva wreck)...

my spider-path, or Chartres lure.

Eurydice of Dream Song,

Henry’s Sheba down south.

Proceeds by word of mouth –

transfigures saturnine keening

to hopeful whistle.  Chickadee,

junco?  Woodpecker –

rousing Ravenna nature

morte (ligneous crucifix-aubade).

1.15.16