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

at the close of a year

JOVIAL STAR

The weathered flesh-tones of the Franklin Bridge

her twin brows arched with wonder

in the imperturbable splendor

of the winter sun.  You give me courage.

Not the one or the other, only

but the concord of the two

in three.  What ravels you

& me – kindling of Dove, or Bee.

Sophie brought me a handful of shells

& an acorn, from Rhode Island.

A child’s gift, out of sand –

at the year’s end, from sea-swells.

& it came to me, at the close of a year

that Earth itself is the ball of clay.

Your mother’s wheel, for a day

& a night... Time unfolding, free & clear.

That fortitude of Roger, in his Providence

was planted by one adamant law –

the human well of love & awe,

the infinite heart, your recompense.

The jovial star beams on its balance-point.

The sense of rightness Osip felt

comes like your sister-dove; eyes melt

frost with twin rays of hearth-fire.  Scent

of your presence, walking beside me, Hobo

intuits, hearkens, turns –

out of these graven Grecian urns

quick water voices, chorusing.  Lamps, glow.

12.31.19

like a Balinese cock-fight

FRISCO CROSSROAD

Poets’ business, like a ring

round a Bali cock-fight –

goodbye to all that.

Shake your kaleidoscope thing,

ping your kalimba – your bricolage

a grubby grab-bag

(seven pounds of brag

& rage, mixed up with garbage).

Meanwhile that flesh-tone bridge

(crossing my Mississippi

song-&-dance) will be

morphing some spider’s double-edge

Venn diagram – a stick figure

at hobo train junction

where sunny Everyman

remembers split Coatlicue.

Rumors of an impasse, whispered

through a chain-link fence.

Barbed lozenge of insistence

scarring Rome, Jerusalem... the word

made fishy (west of Galilee,

east of Athens, Georgia)

as a picnic smorgasbord

laid out beneath barren oak tree.

That smell gets into everything.

Like something baked

a week in a canal – like

messy string theories, untangling

                  *

a knotty plot of pots & pans, banging

the human family

to kingdom come (really?)

from seedy tribes to Nero’s hanging

gardens.  Shady Rome, where every

cosmic veil is torn –

& a black rock is borne

upon recalcitrant shoulders of slavery

into the center of a black hole’s

starry honeycomb.

What ass bears the whole

sum?  What shoe of prophet’s mule?

Maybe an offshoot of Coatlicue

wearing a flimsy linen

Joseph-coat.  A woman,

patient Pietà... La Pia, Psyche...

Ariadne or Arachne, raveling

path P... that rugged,

ragged Francine – plugged

at Frisco crossroad – traveling

freight.  Sometimes you meet a person

heavier than time & space.

Rough wind carves well-faces

lined with laughter, hope... pain...

She steps forth from black stone –

stirring bears in her arms,

palming clay amid storms

of adamant love (makar-maid, shown).

10.4.17

flesh-tone bridge

MAZY CHARTER

The wistful twirling of a yellow leaf

falling from a book of leaves

by the big river.  Waves

of leaves, infinite beyond belief

slanting down through a universe

beyond fall’s azure,

through its perfect mirror

of ineffable air.  The woodpecker’s

not waxwing, but a twin-bird –

matching Thunderbird

like third wing, or word

thing – in Red Wing, we’ve heard.

& they’ve buffed the naked concrete

of the Franklin Bridge

to warm flesh-tone (Wedge

whistling to Jay : almost complete,

they say).  Like hands arching across

the tingling serpent below

someone signals so –

right, all right.  The frail cosmos

is built of moss & dogwood leaves;

made like a dream-song

on a thread so long

from inner lining of young Osip-sleeves.

Hid in a nightfall of Apollon-wrath.

The child-heart trembles

when the chief dissembles –

ice winking in the barrel underneath

                   *

encompassing a land in shambles,

wasted by Behemoth

& Metheboss (cloth-

of-gold twin skimlords, crashing cymbals).

El-Moloch asked for the heart of your son.

For your son the king,

the bloom of everything –

Aztec football in place of the sun.

Apotropaic sign or mirror-pharmakon,

the murmured word of love

becomes a catcher’s glove –

inside-out Osip net (for rescuing someone).

You search the scryptics, yet you

do not come to Me.

Gold almond cider, see?

Where Mendelssohn defeats Deep Blue.

She’s by your side, a kelson, smiling,

spinnaker through gray wall

of seamless cloud – whale

of light fog, swallowing Jonah – a ring

of stone, becoming breathing feathers

for a child of Ocean River,

borne downstream from Neva-

Neva-Heavenland (all-planetary weathers).

Her green eye walks through doors, through gates.

That crossroad in the mirror

overwhelms birth-terror –

seals mazy charter (Liberty checkmates).

9.28.17

concrete Cleopatra

RESURRECTION CEMETERY

The river is calm, like a brown mirror

on the vernal equinox.

Moving through bifocals

of that lovable double oval (dear

Franklin Ave. Bridge).  Gliding

from Ojibwa marsh,

a trickle out of harsh

winters... a fluent continuum (abiding

parchment years, the tides of March).

On this sparse Minneapolis

spring morning, under clumps

of woolly cloud-cover, her twin M-arch

might make a 2-seat kayak for a monarch

(Manitou, Big Wind) –

swelling from wing-finned

goldfish to a whale (or Jonah’s ark).

The flimsy grey wool threads a quipu

knot.  Stravinsky’s right

to be so wrong : the lights

are snuffing out all over Europe...

the little gypsy girl must dance

to death (so we might live).

The crowd roars, GIVE.

Ariadne’s thread enwraps the lance

of Theseus, the hunter.  MINOTAUR

IS RUST (feed him tar-cakes

until he bust).  Stakes

are high – each gets an equal share

                     *

or else.  It’s the American way.

So speak plain English.

Royal myth be not the dish

we wish for now – try testimony.

They killed the King of the Milky Way –

lofty Melchizedek

(& his Irish sidekick,

his brother).  Sacrificial hay

for infinite Corn Goddess, maybe?

Don’t think so.  It is

& means to a dead end (his,

theirs, ours)... rewind the anthropology.

Anonymous shadow tilts toward sundown.

Ghost dance under trees.

He coming back, in threes –

the buried man, with his Papillon.

The guy in Resurrection Cemetery

(never gone, still here).

Can’t kill someone who never

died – so let’s undo all this necessary

violence (stand your ground, Hamlet

– until Ophelia’s dead gone).

The Shadow Knows (someone

whispers – my Dad?).  The blood is let.

It’s an old warped story, on the loom

of Time.  Peruvian lamb

sandwich, taken for a ham... a

concrete Cleopatra (equal to her doom).

3.20.17

across languages & worlds

CEDAR HANDS

O calm August river, weaving

under your ceiling of gray

fluff!  I’d like to say

you are a figure for Edith, rocking,

singing Sophie to sleep, somewhere

above Ethiopian night.

I’d like to formulate

a lamp in a window, out there

on a foggy lump in Narragansett Bay –

Rose Island Light, maybe –

what stands for certainty

in the midst of rocky sea, the sway

of tide.  They’re almost finished now

with the bridge repair.

Her double eyebrows bear

their concrete filigree, & show

twin circles in the river’s glass.

Their delicate embrace

a fractal carapace

for curving lips of one round lass –

a sea-green pebble, calipered

by radiant massive Einstein

armature.  So shine,

my lighthouse pine – like shy brown bird

or Great Blue Heron – one sharp eye

across the moving waters!

Agape holds stars

in loving stillness – rhyming sky

                      *

with earth.  It is an ur-rhyme, personal –

a Neva-petroglyph,

an anchored spider-skiff,

chaste common akme (Eeyore-humble);

like moony pleb with sunny Phoebus,

roaming Apollinaire

with domed Apollinaris,

Love is that hearth-melding force

that fuses Unity & Liberty –

soul freedom is the spark

of arcs.  I found a monarch,

lonely, in the donkey straw you see

down by the iron river (pausing,

perhaps, between White

House & Soldier’s Rest).

We bowed to one another, browsing

sheared grass, cordially.

The song began like this –

a dream made manifest,

Railsplitter... prodigal Boy...

held in grey threads of dog days’

dawnlight.  Soft rainbow

pigeon croon – low

throaty turtledove song-maze –

dream-songe across the meadowlands

of languages & worlds

farfalla-far – she whirls

& jags... floats into cedar hands.

8.12.16

Franklin Ave. Bridge

There are orioles in the woods

EARTH-GATE

They’re casting another bridge across

the River; saws whine,

a tug toots, the cranes

lift high & gawky, like red-rose

giraffes.  There are orioles in the woods...

My long-drawn notes

shore up a span that floats

on vague bleu Gulf streams – moods

& swings; you have to walk between

the strands of frayed thread

looped onto gravity (dead

reckoning)... O plum-colored has-been,

warped by Magdalenian

& riverine diffraction!

Yet one stone section

lifts the key.  Giuliana

limns it, with her simple pottery –

the old grey painter

in his deserted corner

emanates intransigent asperity

like mud-splashed cast-off prophecy.

Only the rough rind

of some green kiwi-mind...

her catenary rainbow bend (sea-

sown, high-flown).  Yon Earth-Gate

shines at earliest dawn –

solemn mandorla-keystone,

freedom-sign (gioia incarnate).

5.19.16

Primary colors

LIFE-SAVERS

A warm December, Pearl Harbor Day.

Pale & luminous radiance

suffuses the primary colors

of the workmen’s big machinery

in the river (below Franklin Bridge).

Dazzling maternal uncle

Jim’s birthday – a Ravlin

clé to the mystery.  Mrs. Elledge

added those little busts of Bach,

Mozart, & Beethoven

to my piano-lesson

collection (when I finished each book);

I loved her.  Jim waltzed Agnes,

the Viennese musician’s

daughter, around Lincoln

Center – while his own jeune fille was

in the shrouds of late-adolescent

angst, despair.  O

Juliet... swallowed at last

by Frisco Bay (agenbite

of inwit, James).  The pearl in the harbor

was a vivid soul, before

that fall; maybe somewhere

the wind still ruffles her black hair.

The soul, like a robin redbreast, wavers

high on its dogwood branch

over each day’s routine

avalanche.  Hunts for life-savers.

12.7.15

Franklin Ave. Bridge

Cottonwoods on River Road

A poet builds a house with words.  Underneath the words, the wind blows.  Time moves on, change happens.  It's out of control, seemingly.

Or is it?  The house is built on sand, or stone.  Maybe limestone, which is a record of shifting time.

Back in the 1920s, my Grandpa Ravlin built a sturdy brick house at 1615 River Road, in Minneapolis - around the corner from where I am now living, after about 45 years in Rhode Island.

In 1615, John Donne became an Anglican minister and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral (pretty much against his will - he was commanded thus by King James I).

A poem has its own architecture, if you live in it for a while you begin to sense the contours with your fingertips.  The first Book of Ravenna Diagram concluded, fittingly, just as I was leaving Rhode Island.  Tonight - maybe - I'm starting up again.  The impulse is relentless, like the Big Muddy ink-wash across the street.  It feels good to be at it again, anyway.

Moving is painful, as thousands of Syrian refugees can tell you (better than I can).

The state of Rhode Island was established (under the leadership of Roger Williams) as a "refuge for troubled consciences".

Let them in, America (Statue of Liberty speaking).

MAMMOTH SNAKE

By the River Road, under the tall

bare cottonwoods, on the last

warm day, before the blast

of ice descends from the North Pole

I think of this Mississippi

constancy (unbending

loops & bends, winding

serpent-wise out of prehistory)

& of my frailty, my brevity

having forsook soft sand-

castle petite Rhode Island

for some territorial interiority –

inward cthonic Mendelssohn

where Mirror Lakes echo

down Arthur Street (so

far-off in the way-back zone).

The cottonwoods lean toward the sun.

Gravity pulls at

the Franklin Bridge (that

spider-thread my brother swan-

dived off, & lived).  Flatland anguish

drags at Minneapolis –

down gridiron avenues

of gray snow, hunkered refugees...

The low sun, like a paradigm

hovers just over the mammoth

snake.  The face in the cloth

shudders – furls birchbark (trireme).

11.19.15