Good Friday in Wales

MEDITATION ROOM

My mother’s late twin watercolor

(Bardsey Island, 2002).  Dark

room, light room.  Look

through the window to the cemetery –

crumbled walls in Wales, a stony cross.

Pale green as early April

outside the infirmary – still,

fresh, frail.  Her final brush with grass,

her hopeful air.  The Boanerges

were the Sons of Thunder –

redheads, most likely – Dioscuri

in their scarlet robes – woodpeckers,

Thunderbirds (like my two redhead brothers).

Dakota found him on the earth

near Red Wing – red-feathered

Thunder-Birdman (portent for Little Crow).

Thunder-&-lightning were one mighty Bird –

a firebird, roaring crimson.

Fire-flinging wingèd one –

a Persian peacock (Rhody Red?)

or Phoenix, soaring like a rainbow

from gray winter ash.

Woodpecker, with his calabash

tap-tapping oaks for golden honey-glow

Morse codes the closing of an Iron Age

& restoration of that Paradise

the Son of Davy Jonah scries

from his doom-rood.  Just turn the page,

                    *

he cries.  Along this feathered spine

where all the leaves are bound,

your legend of Twin-Town –

refuge for sacred monsters (in a pine

grove, under Ariadne’s Crown,

northward of everywhere).

The holy child of Mary

is such a singularity.  Scapegoat-twin,

divine-human, he will dethrone the kings

with goldenrod of charity;

rise from his bed of cruelty

with flames of sunflower – with Easter wings.

Just beyond my mother’s watercolor

David Jones grotto, I glimpse

tall flickering cave-nymphs…

a moonlit retina (of temple vault, pillar).

Twin rooms, of light & dark, enclosed

(like matryoshka dolls) inside

each other.  Casket-scaffold

for a model ship, perhaps?  Micòl's

canoe?  A meditation room

for mourning Magdalen.

Through tears of rage… vision.

A ragged almond tree, coming to bloom;

immense pressure of gravity, around a shell;

the coracle of wounded heart

lifting as purple columbine – a spurt

from humming bird-nest (thunder-sky-well).

4.10.20

the secret joy

DRIFTWOOD FIGURE

Hobo, driftwood figure, with his pal

Oblomov, headed south

aboard their pallid frigate

under the North Star (fleurs du mal).

Lent was coming on, when every

scrivener is shriven

or be damned.  Even

Isaiah, with that meteor (so very

hot) beneath his tongue, bent down

into the dust… awaiting

his Participating

Angel of the Harvest (Whitsun

shine).  The 50th, the Pentecost.

At very end of May.

One grain of precious clay,

one grey pebble… one lamp not lost.

Gravity looms there like a thundercloud.

Not Rome, but Man’s place

in the universe (ace

in the hole, casket buried in a field).

The secret joy, il ben del’intelletto –

Dante’s apprehension

of that Beatrician

quiddity.  Incorruptible glow

shed by her smiling shade… felt, so.

Bright alba in the diamond

of your emerald almond;

hopeful coracle (Micòl’s canoe).

3.6.20

somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave

CAHOKIAN GIFT

The sun peeks through this February weather

as a frail reed or fluted candle

finds a chink in some Siberian

prison wall.  United States are altogether

in states of disarray today.  Tonight

the President’s speech will

be, no doubt, a veritable

trompe l’oueil – he will not make it right.

Henry too lingers in his fog

of disaffection.  Absent

from his Hobo-tent,

divided from his tiny tree-frog

peeper (cooing like a mourning dove

no larger than a copper penny –

greenish rust, gone silver Jonah

now, somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave).

He hears relentless Ocean River

bend the zodiacs toward clay,

Big Muddy bearing all away

into her coral Nephthys-quiver;

chambers of Coatlicue

like dead bee hives, storing

the crystallized outpouring

(zigzag red-black raven roundelay).

O motionless Greek urn, still turning,

Ezekiel-bones, still yearning!

Redeem Time’s churning

revolutions, Adonai – transfiguring

                        *

North Star!  You mantle humankind

like that Madonna della Misericordia

Piero della Francesca frescoed –

tricolor umbrella-shelter for the blind!

For Agape is a magnetic prong, threads

taconite to one Itasca

lady’s slipper (showy!) – &

drops rusty anchor of Rhode Island reds

into a lambent western window-rose

(mauve, scarlet, violet & blue)

where Hope beams into view –

& from her constant fortitude still glows!

So anchor Henry’s trembling canoe

deep in your heart-of-hearts’

matrix – where timespace floats –

in that classy garage Micòl showed you;

your forsaken Byzantine three-master

beached in parochial nowhere,

ferrying Alighieri into air.

Where the mosaic wave of our disaster

cradles in the love that heals despair

& shimmers there, like Juliet

walked back from fatal plummet

or Henry Bear, helped from his chair

of perilous dismay (to restoration

& recovery).  So lift

my hokey Cahokian gift

up to your Eye of Providence… Union.

2.4.20

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

on six directions

CLAY CUP

I will not rival Dante’s double

spiral (from depth of Hell

to heart of Love) but spell

a complementary bubble-

rêve, mapped on the horizontal.

Infernos of damnation,

sparks of elation

harbor here – my guide no Virgil,

only turtle-speed Hobo;

not Beatrice now

but one blithe ocean-dew

rainbow (her smiling Jonah-brow).

Like that mercurial Micòl in Ferrara

she lights my imagination

with X-S creation,

aslant from Providence to Frisco –

a river, crossing at the Gateway Arch

like some switchback, Pawnee

Missouri – molding a key-

stone at Cahokia (ten fingers’ kiln-torch).

Where slowly, slowly, the potter’s wheel

with shaping eye-in-hand

rotates the whole land

counter-clockwise – churns against the keel;

casting her clay cup on six directions

like Black Elk diamond –

firing her mandala-almond

amid each human hearth-rose (Hobo reckons).

8.5.19

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

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

mysteries of the oval garage

BENIGN SPECTACLES

Those benign spectacles of the Franklin Bridge

were long frozen over.

Inside & outside were

captured in a mickle mirror (garage

at the edge of Ferrara).  It wasn’t a map

of America, so much;

only Hobo’s tender clutch

(Falstaff) of Henry’s hand (old chap).

He wants to show you something.  Opens

one puffy palm, and there

tattooed in coppery-red scar

– soft oval eye, mandorla lens.

America sleeps in her own green fields.

Feminine Hamlet croons

to her, lit by Hobo-moons...

Turn back to thy La Paix, Ophelia.

That Egyptian Art-Deco monolith

of Roger, stepping off

the cliff – out of his skiff

into a void of air, the whole dream-myth...

– & it was underfoot all the time.

Like a grail-dish, or agate

eye; a lamp on a frigate

or arc of a torch, Lazarus-rhyme

or Jonah-wing.  The harbor’s safety-net

for flowery Juliet –

buoyant, incarnate

Normandie (gilding Henry’s Mayflower signet).

2.26.19

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