yodeling in Mendelssohn

LITTLE MIRROR

The mind is like a little mirror

& the word is like

a mirror in that lake.

We skated there, one ancient year –

across the icy glass, Heidi.

In Mendelssohn, sweet

neighborhood (complete

Garden of Cyrus now, in memory).

A melody of day-lilies cheers Henry

Hobo (by the Mississippi).

He might be somebody

you know – booked into penitentiary?

Sol.  Solo.  Absent Sheba

browses in another aisle

(archived in old Rhode Isle).

Her ship’s in search of Colchia

lambswool – seamless gold web,

mute mutuality –

griot reality

lofted to laughter (on Mount Horeb).

Square triangles of pyramids

fit into portable log

cabin logarithms, Mag.

Your stone’s a tiny tablet, hid

beside that lake, in Galilee –

a solidarity

sodality, a party

writ on water.  Fountain, artistry.

6.27.18

one last hurdle, Amelia

DANTE CHAIR

The gazebo’s grime-filmed mosquito net.

The black chain-link fence

in backyard Providence

climbed by Clem (mock-orange? Nyet).

Elegant quincunx in Cyrus-orchard.

Natural calculations

for dames in Netherlands –

to sieve the flux of spacetime (hard

homework).  Oxidized old photographs

curl to brown negatives.

A lime-warp cosmos

rolls up like a scroll of epitaphs

on fire.  So memory seems to curdle

too.  Gödel’s fetal pose

(knot of incompleteness).

Here’s the Pacific! – one last hurdle,

Amelia.  Archival snapshot

lost at sea...  your back

on deck, maybe?  Ack-

ack survivor?  Unknown soldier?  Dot

gone a-whaling vast expanse,

revived in some albumen

album.  Icarhea, return –

amaze us.  Dad is dead.  All US

mourns you, lass.  Jesus the airman

in a Paris dream   floats

through rainbow dust-motes

light checkmate   first the grain

                *

then the ear   then the grain

of wheat   in the heart

of your ear   lost art

of flying flute   solo   Dakota plain-

song   Black Elk   pilot-fish

naturally Christian

(more so than mission-

school)   so dream your spirit-wish

when the brutal tide of inhumanity

recedes   we will stand

by the shores of Mini-land

bullets   baby hummingbirds   no-see-

ums now   old Green Man chair

of Old Man North   unseen

now too   copper-sheen

bright mold of Liberty   still there

like curule seat of Caesar (Jules)

a Dante chair   Mom spied

in the PX   at Salvation Army

& dragged back home   April Fools!

It’s very rocky   in Armenia

an Abyssinian ark   sleeps

in Paul Bunyan steeps

a Tuscan nurses   meek Elephantea

with yellow ivory   fantasia

folk tales of the sun

shining   for everyone

through rose-glass coracles (acacia)

7.12.17

Sunset (Mississippi River at St. Anthony Falls)

White Rose sets in the west

SHADOW-WELL

George Washington was born today;

Sophie Scholl was killed

as well.  Her cup was spilled

in order to brim up the bloody

mystery of iniquity that is

our history – an epic-

georgic bio-pic

or tragicomedy (blind Theseus

meets Ariadne in a maze

of corn – assumes she’s

golden Taurida... FINIS).

Wings waft into a purple haze.

The moon belongs to everyone.

She set this morning through

a window shade (pale blue

the air, drawn up from Galilean

shadow-well).  This labyrinth

contains a Minotaur

indeed – his name your

own.  The light is very thin

within retaining walls of iron

chicken-wire (chain link);

quincunctial conjunction

for plowman (Sir Thos. Browne).

Wisdom B. Justified (in all 

her children).  Madre moon

sheds rain upon human

travail... silvers the plow (selah).

2.22.16

Moonset, 6:35 a.m. (Minneapolis)