the season is Lent

LEAD PENCIL

At the most infinitesimal quantum

precinct level, trouble

is unpredictable.

Dust gathers like snow… some

galactic thread-warp effect.

The season is desolate.

Apollinaire is not

Melchizedek (the line is indirect).

The season is Lent.  Everyman

leans on shriven bones,

shaken by groans.

What will rise from such desolation?

In the river of speech, a quintessence

of dust (mixed with rain).

Shapes a diamond again –

hopeful whisper of Providence.

The metaphysics of God’s mother

(Theotokos, Mary)

is an infinite query

for blind Hobo, Henry.  Some other

realm of irenic Siren smiles

blue San Francisco Bay

over slivers of hay,

into dark monarch cedar files…

& you don’t know what I’m talking about

since the Ferrara canoe

glints gray (lead pencil #2).

Since ash flutters down (lights out).

3.3.20

Garden of Gesthemane

mercurial transit of the Martian sun

GRAND MARQUIS

Armistice Day.  For all veterans.

For memory of an end

to hostilities.  Promised Land

or Providence... high limbs of the ones

who came before, palms lifted (orans).

From martyrs of brave speech,

whole truth, let us beseech

ineffable blessing.  Alighieri stands

nigh frozen Sant’Apollinaire

trasumanare in Ravenna.

Where mossy Giuliana

calls me from her potter’s lair

(soft aviator from a sunken realm).

Like that Tim Taylor, seeker

at Pacific depth (1132

ft. down... USS Grayback graven on its helm).

Project Lost 52 – to bring to light

every forsaken sheep-canoe

& let them float anew

somewhere divine (mercurial transit

of the Martian sun).  She’s calling me.

Like salt-grain in the war-engine,

a kernel from the Corn Maiden

of Grant Wood haunts... her Grand Marquis

a black blind spot across that gilded orb,

Ferrari Rio Santo Spiritu –

she snakes toward you (& you)

from her smile-park (topaz to curb).

11.11.19

Thunderbird already there

LIVID GRAIL

Late October evening.  Minnesota.

The sky already blue-black,

midnight blue.  Dim speck

of starshine, here & there.  The Hiawatha

sped from Chicago north, May 29

(1935).  Heavy freight train

hobbling across the iron

span, now – screeching, chirping (mine).

Peto, Reminiscences of 1865.

Those mystic chords of memory...

someone to end the enmity

with eloquence (while he was still alive,

and after).  Summon our humanity

into the web of mutuality –

where rootless irrationality

might lose its sway (so hope we).

These chords align their intervals,

octagonal resemblances.

Out of a salty sibilance,

an ocean-sigh (when sea-bell tolls) –

one heave of molten planetary heart

whose Jonah waits, to rise again

out of the chambers of Leviathan

coiling a spring where all the rivers start.

The prehistoric limestone streams

ply on ply, like Schifanoia

allegories in Ferrara –

irenic fossilized life-forms

                 *

of some St. Vitus dance, before all wars;

here a spiral clover-shell

& here an almond eye

gazing from hell up to those stars

with a perennial fidelity.

Maybe it was your canoe,

Micòl – breaching anew

through stinging surf of grief & joy;

for that amor who is always in advance,

arriving before you know

like an eye-in-hand, so –

molded like your clay flute-radiance,

the little bird who sings out of the kiln.

Coulombe, coulombe,

she coos her name –

so simple, waiting at the windowsill;

out of the fire & burning palms

like Phoenix from her tomb

a new America (coulombe,

coulombe) this livid grail exhumes –

ghost dance of the dove who came before

of Thunderbird-already-there

through the black night air

from the dancing bear – shady amor

framing with shimmering wave-wings

milky Melchizedek

& bright ginger Jack

& gentle Abraham (grail-splicing springs).

10.29.19

translated to an island

SIMPLE IMMANENCE

Constitution Day.  Coke’s legacy,

translated to an island rose –

mother & nurse of repose

on the throne of Imago Dei – si?

Your lambswool, Giuliana – moss-green

through the red-dust desert.

Alighieri’s tomb, in quiet

(such as lie, smothered in grass, by San

Vitale).  Twin peacocks, maybe –

between two almond trees?

In the Ferrara freeze

(Micòl shivering in her garage)... see?

Your solar emblems not for me,

Ezra.  Marble from Ravenna

swiped for Rimini, & gloria –

the simple immanence of meek Marie

shunned like a ghetto-child.  & so

the merry-go-round of sacrifice

creaks back to 1913, Paris...

Ugo, Parisina, burnt to ash once more

for the war to end all wars (before

the end).  A rust-bronze Penny

blackens backward, in Gehenna –

from dim crossroad will she soar

like diamond Southern Cross.  She is

lips’ ghost dance ring-

around-the-rosy... clear spring

Pax-water (your West Branch Isis).

9.17.19

whispers out of Colchis

painting by Michael Gould (acrylic and Elmer's Glue)

MILKY DOME

Henry hearkened to the dream song hum

along the stairwell of a crane

bone flute.  The black mane

of Mama Miriam Dodona waved to him.

As if a little tree anchored his coracle;

a branch of whispers out of Colchis,

woolen silky-shroud of Maximus –

his golden fleece a minor miracle

where twin wheels mesh to form one

almond (of almonds).  Mighty

mickle canoe, whose Isis-eye

looks from the prow (tease of the sun).

There is a vortex in the Black Sea

where the Great Year pivots –

Hamlet churns through his regrets

there, until Milky Way whorls like a G.

There is a grail of emerald stone

beckons from the bottom

of the sea.  Four rivers stream

out of a matrix there – exalted zone

of moody CHURNAGOGUE – the potter’s

center & circumference;

Ferrara ghetto-sense

mingled with Dante-radiance (all hers).

& the backward Nile flows down to Memphis

where the martyr at the bleak hotel

sipped from her cup, & cancelled Hell –

his milky dome hoisted to foamy wisdom-bliss.

8.8.19

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

call him Halfway Hank

FICTIONAL GARAGE

Hobo staggers along the riverbank

halfway between Henry

& Osiris (bury-

man).  Call him Halfway Hank.

Like Bluejay all out of mummer’s tricks

memories of a Myth America

detach from his hat (ha-ha,

caw-caw).  Tall Tale of Two-Sticks

maybe – or The Time We Had a Picnic.

Nostalgia for infinity

invokes our Plenty-

Big-Prairie; mysterieux Henri Pick

was anonymous, along with Alexander P.

These meadowlands are Russian.

Thunder’s Oblomovian this

afternoon (American iz you & me).

So memory would like to dab a fresco

containing a continent.

As when a canoe is bent

around a bough of yew, or spent willow...

in some fictional garage in Ferrara

where recent immigrants

gather for sustenance

like Jonah huddled in a whale’s cantina

& the eye in your hand opens like a tear

& the river streams into the Gulf

where Wolfram & Beowulf

celebrate Thanksgiving (more Grail? – here).

7.16.19

like San Francisco vertigo

PAINFUL CORNS

Henry’s inching toward the center

of his poem – bright high gyre

like William Golding’s Spire

(splintered, keening, full of ire).

In the Cathedral at Rodez, we saw

its balsa-wood replica

(like seedling, or amoeba-

virus) – Jocelyn’s vanishing awe

lifted to depths of infinite regress

like San Francisco vertigo.

Yet it shall not be so

with you.  Your realm is humbleness.

Your solar crown, a crown of thorns

your aureole a poor halo

picked up (after the show)

by crotchety vets (painful corns).

Somebody tell me where we’re going

with all this, Henry!

The acorn in an almond tree

makes not much sense; canoeing

(not a major sport in Italy) is

unlikely to resolve the fight

between the mining money’s might

& piping pioneers of wilderness

(attainted Oz).  Henry dozes

in his miniature oak tree –

a mythological Charlie...

& will he wake?  Check JB’s glozes.

6.29.19

serpent ocarina

RED RIVER

Dante calibrated to the nth degree

the classic perihelion

of medieval civilization

simply to retrieve the smile of Biche

out of nine coils of Cerberus

& that sulfurous pit

known to Cautantowwit

who cauterizes death with raven caws.

More things in heaven & earth, Horatio.

We’re all caught up in this

wrestling match with the abyss;

there’s no detachment of the mind from woe

nor from the body’s final strife

– breathing with agony

at the crossroads (in RI) –

where Red River meets Sargasso Gulf.

So the poem of America embodies

Juliet upon the parapet

Ophelia with hairnet

(download Vertigo for double-whammies) –

the tensile span of every suicide,

waiting for someone to reach

them (eye-in-hand) – teach

HOPE to hollowed-out children (pied

serpent, surging back to Mendelssohn).

Observe the valiant

canoe, she said.  Plant

almonds, quincunctial.  Amen, amen.

6.27.19

Down the Mrs. Nile

BLACK MARBLE

The slow green river is historian as well, 

moving with time from here

to there, yet always here

same as ever, with detritus of fossil

shells – eroding palimpsest

subject to misquotation,

willful erasure, mistaken

readings...  Observe that anxious,

fretful archivist – thin railing Ez

with his fistful of heroes

impaled on total loss

(a maze of smoking Flanders trenches).

Like a Minotaur in the bughouse

with his Schifanoia grid –

hierarchical, to put a lid

on greed, by force (his Musci-Louse).

What then’s this chaos of bad dreams?

Life’s horror-show?  Not so,

not so.  PAX.  What thou

lovest well...  After the steamboat schemes

Latrobe still floats his capitol design.

Cornstalks, tobacco flowers...

Virgo, with Isis-powers,

on the adamant of time, will shine –

black marble out of Nile (West Branch).

Not abstract or Pythagorean,

but human, Galilean –

shepherd in Ravenna – beaming avalanche.

5.16.19

unusual poem

OLMEC TEETH

Providence, a meeting-house of rivers.

Moshassuck, Woonasquatucket...

Narragansett alphabet.

Key into the Language (Roger’s

hopeful idiom).  Green valley space

for some invisible Seeker-

church – plain Shaker

chair for Eli, or Henry (grace

supplementing human nature

like a mild blessing

before Thanksgiving).

Can we do this, Roger?  Sure.

Providence, a circling campfire

of Renaissance persons.

Like a Rembrandt summons

to be humble (as St. Matthew’s ear

to voice of dark-haired angel).

Listen, proud Ferrara –

not to glose of Schifanoia,

but shade-garden of Bassani-spell.

The meekness of a soft goldfinch

will be memorial

for what was already eternal,

always.  As our Redemption is a cinch

for flighty heartbeat (underneath

the chain-link).  Grail-canoe

or eye-in-hand – you

fled into thin air, through Olmec teeth.

5.6.19

to Nathan Phillips

GREEN HABITAT

                                    to Nathan Phillips

The Mirror Lakes in Mendelssohn

were smooth & clear – were

mirrors of the weather,

mirrors of each other (twins).

Your mind’s a mirror too (cloudy

today, with intimations

of its limitations).

Looming earth, a child’s infinity...

In his mandorla of Ferrara

Giorgio hooked the canoe

against a garage wall (you

remember, Micòl?).  Observe, selah

its simple elegance & rightness.

Mirror of itself –

bowstring of Guelf

& Ghibelline.  O blessed senselessness!

I surmise the one you call Jesus Nazir

arose not in hothouse of fear

but a rural atmosphere –

full of parabolic melodies, limpid, near.

The Son of Man... the Son of Man...

not him, but you – & you...

like Hagia Sophia in a crew

of galley slaves.  Their submarine plan

winks from searchlight eyes – their fleece

the gold thread of Ariadne,

knotted in Rhode Island

Black Ships (ocean’s milky matrix

                      *

poured from ineffable Promised Land).

In Siena, insouciant Pax

lounges by sober Justice

in the fresco of Good Government (hand

of Ambrogio).  That thread from beyond

exotic Trebizond

plummets, au fond

to Minotaur’s despair – demented Roy

Dumonde; yet we are gathered up

into another summa

body – solidarità

of Love’s affectionate grail-cup.

It was not price nor money could have

purchased Rhode Island;

Rhode Island was purchased

by love.  So step into the rawhide nave

of Nathan Phillips’ Wakan Tanka –

Spirit beyond each sullen

pond of identification.

Spring winds the rust of iron rancor

into another, more spacious America –

florid green habitat

of Uncle Weaver Rabbit,

Auntie Corn Gatherer (limestone Columbia).

That mud-brown mirror harbors hidden

depths.  & yet she’ll float –

Nile-Isis, river-mote –

your eye-in-hand (nearby, Cahokian).

1.19.19

a glossolalia from grapevine hive

ALMOND SHELL

The gray clouds in the distance, over

the Bruegel panorama.

Coltrane, Alabama.

Hollow octave.  Windblown clover.

In the foreground, a guy named Frank.

Jeff, Joe... somebody

you know, Big Daddy?

No.  Here to clean the sewage tank.

In the garage, a long-unused canoe.

Dry almond shell,

cicada husk.  Well,

things happen.  I loved her, too.

Everything wears out like a garment,

Preacher says.  Love’s

monarch’s in the grove –

dark cedars frame him monument.

Cupped hands perform their wrinkled rite,

a mandorla for Miriam

(her longest night).  I am

your cloud-shape spinning into sight,

I am your turtledove of rose

granite.  A woven smile

gets fuzzy, chile.  Goes

bumbly, succeeding prose;

a glossolalia from grapevine hive

that only Providence

(unleafing salience)

can sail through oven husk – alive.

9.12.18

domestic hellenism

REMBRANDT WORLD

Imagine a humble Rembrandt world

(domestic hellenism, say)

where everything is (replay,

rusty Super-8) revealed –

unsealed, familiar testament

wherein you were sown

amid Grant Wood corn

(Birthplace of Herbert Hoover), bent

beneath pewter thunderheads

like wheat long-planted

at a battlefield (wind-

harrowed silos, homesteads).

By the rude bridge that arched the flood

– the wordspan, carved against

despair (Grace hastens

with her furnace-lamp... slight lift of mood)

here once the embattled farmers stood

– measuring early earth,

where your Dream (4th

of J?) becomes flesh & blood

& fired the shot heard round the world.

Ariosto in Ferrara,

say – that avian eye

on tyranny (Limentani’s branded

heron-lid).  Poetry is resistance

against the Emperor

of pyramidal distemper;

Concord... Voronezh... (buoyant equivalence).

4.19.18

evening of the year

TIRED HAND

November is the evening of the year.

Peasants in Bruegel scenes,

old Hobo has-beens

cluster by each barnyard bonfire.

Smells of farm & mill & stream,

the salt of drying fish.

Legends of Gilgamesh,

Leviathan.  Earth’s drowsy dream

wherein these van der Weyden faces

peer, like wildflowers

(like elemental creatures).

Matrix of sky & sea places,

of perishable limestone prints

from whence a soul emerges

smiling... Demiurge’s

horsehair, flickering (Francesca’s hints).

Medieval bread & wine of things.

Cascade of bridges over

other bridges – river

washing under massive rings.

The solidarity of timebound

beasts, breathing together

under whip, rein, tether.

Muddy, between Arch & Mound

looms... pregnant with Spiritu.

What Piero knew,

Bruegel & Jasper too –

shade-palm, surrounding you

                    *

& me – stretching toward Pacific blue.

I layer watercolors so,

over crepuscular canoe

hid in Italian garage (one almond clue).

The limestone waterfalls in Rimini

like tears across a scallop-

sign.  The curtains drop,

the veil gives way... a human unity

of suffering is all our play.

Da Vinci, with tired hand

limns one command –

love one another, every day.

For we are one.  A multitude,

personified.  Benevolent

Ancient of Days bent

each into the mirror’s flood,

together – riverflow of heart-

veins from the earth

welling to fiery hearth –

lenticular sunset, plangent cloud-art.

So spinning from primordial rose

the golden maize of Chartres

guides you to its Artist...

Daedalus, not Minotaur; Grace

Ravlin, not some puppet-master

in the Kremlin.  Shadow

of Mona Lisa grin... you

rise before the fall (Easter).

11.10.17

it hovers outside

FATAL SALIENCE

Hobo mumbles along the riverbank

as October air grows cool

& clear.  The leaves, old fool,

the leavings... swift canoes, that sank

like royal palms into an azure sky,

into a fiery wheel

of oven-clay.  A seal

baked into bright red wax... on our way

to London, Guildenstern.  Or to

Verona, Ferrara...

mirrors of Ravenna

(fatal salience, Ursiana’s woe).

Surrounded by wolf-raven, Juliet.

You dance the sacrifice

like unto death (Paris

1913) – knifed in the clammy sweat

of granite vault, the stony silence

of the lie – artillery

deployed (ply over ply).

& does she live or die?  Hence,

Hobo-Romeo – you’ll roam

like Orpheus in hell,

sleepwalk a frozen spell

(so buried man goes skipping home,

strange hierophant).  Ineffable

grey granary of wisdom,

Ursiana’s 8-pt. dome

gathered to a grain of sable

                  *

sand... one little grain of sand.

As in articulate horsehair-

dream of Leonardo, air

figures crystal acorn – understand,

it hovers outside everything, & so

transmits clear folds

of Salvator’s bold

Nazir-songe.  Swing low,

sweet chariot... ray forth your fire

out of an almond eye

blazing   you shall not die

with gallant measure to inspire

the rooster of the Earth to crow

like Voronezh raven, or

like Vitruvian Man

from center of the Earth grow

feathers   coppery feathers   Ferrarese

Veronese  hazy

morris-dancing   mazy

corn mandala   limping   A-Z

sweet librarian   Natasha

or Nadezhda   sister-doves

swelling   dawn alcoves

of spring   primordial   selah

in the mandorla   of the casket-

womb   you must be borne

aloft   grey   Valentine

your sepulchre   1132   (kismet)

10.23.17