under the sign of the Virgin

WRITING HAND

Herod the Great is out hunting tonight

to make himself great again.

History, all over.  Hen

clucks in pigpen.  Overhead, bright

Star of Stars yet hovers (esoteric,

weightless).  Invisible world

of worlds to come – squirreled

away in a barn (near Bethlehem, Pa).

Maximus, transfixed by history,

his writing hand severed,

still corresponded

with his nephew (far end of Black Sea).

Hen’s fishing for sense, like Hobo

the limp lamprey (curled

on the riverbank).  Churl?

Fisher King?  Overhead – Virgo.

Not the Twins, but something like.

Twin sitters.  Throned

drones, long retired

from hive (72 bricks of...).

Not trying to be obscure here,

that f’sure.  Innocence

dances through the universe

unfathomed on our faithless sphere.

On her Milky Way.  Here Grace Ravlin

sketches a summer evening

at Mt. Vernon – fingering

the treasure map (Pennsylvanian)

                  *

tracing a quiet constellation

echoed on the ground.

Her wisdom is profound

through purity.  Just perfection

mirrored in frame of Providence;

sunlit warmth of hearth

stirring Pig’s Eye from death

to life (St. Paul to Minneapolis).

The artist makes an eye with fingertips

at edge of scabbard.

Ariadne-thread.

Clue to labyrinth.  Slips

into Gloucester (blind man’s buff)

to paint twin boats

nestled in soft coats

of emerald.  Grace is enough.

Ceres, under Sirius... sparrows,

hysterica passio...

madness of Angelo

or any other tyrannos

threatening an alien child

(warped in labyrinth

of jealousy).  Absinthe,

minted at Fort Knox – wild

wrath of slighted boar (the king’s

own Fury).  Here’s the church,

here’s the steeple – open

the door... (where the sea-choir sings).

12.28.18

Grace Ravlin, Overlooking George Washington's Garden, 1922

White Buffalo will dance

PRAIRIE GRASS

That men invented the entire horoscope

looking up at the silken knots

of stars – their slow thoughts

tracing remote ellipses with a rope

on sand.  That the soul configures

these pantomimes of fate,

explaining (Bantu or Sanskrit)

why the king had to die, the princess

dance upon her own grave, once.

Ironies of the old men,

& that sybil-crone

left with her grieving remonstrance.

My mother painted an oil of early spring

in Hopkins, 1960s –

solitary white house

over brune & barren slopes, folding

down to Mirror Lake, a few leafless trees

& the soaring robin’s-egg sky

in its firmament of high

stratus (midwestern hopefulness).

With Virgo ascendant over his plantation

Washington will walk the garden,

taste the measureless serene –

the unfinished pyramid of the nation

soaked in honeydew tears of Evening Star.

Yet White Buffalo will dance

on prairie grass... her light

lance touch the forehead of the War.

12.23.18

guarding the garden

painting by Phoebe Gould (ca. 1992?)

GREEN CORN

Half-moon tonight, like a silver flask

of molten lava.  On this date

George Washington was translate

(1799).  Here’s his life-mask :

fine profile.  Merging in white clay,

like a peaceful moon.

Landlord, when all’s said & done.

Valley Forger, sensing Californ-i-ay

in the green corn of his plantation

garden.  Grace Ravlin

etched that evening scene –

sweet Virgo in Virginia (dawning nation).

The myth rides with the Indian.

Scars limbs of slaves.

Everyone behaves.

A raven-crumb plummets into ocean.

Something’s lugged back, out of clay...

the lunar wilderness.

Innocence, blessedness –

Sophia twirling in the calm of day.

Like young Hal emerging from a golden egg

(his father’s legacy).

Attainted crown, see –

buried bones in Resurrection (Pig’s

Eye) Cemetery.  Across the river,

on Lakota Bluff.

Two swords – it is enough.

Gesthemane is haunted, Indian-giver.

12.14.18

after looking at Joan Mitchell paintings

SIMPLE BUBBLE

The battle for the blank white page.

To start anew, Joan.

Pale-bright field of corn

shaded by grey to black paint.  Rage?

Minnesota summer wheat

outside New Ulm.

Bohemian hum

of Anton Gàg?  Felt like defeat

for everyone.  Hungry Dakotas,

heimlich Bavarians...

local George Washingtons

banked on cheap lots (take theirs).

Everybody trying to shill Big George

back in redcoat London.

Not to be outdone,

Tidewater gents – that’s our land, by George!

Learn some Narragansett, maybe.

Milton did – from Roger,

one hot frozen winter.

To love, not to betray, your neighbor?

Somebody tell me how to get from here

to there, America.

Too used to being honcho

number one?  Come to shore;

wash in water.  À bas.  Restore.

The level’s golden measure,

simple bubble of air...

sea’s middle C, beyond all war.

10.13.18

and willows could not hold more

STEADY SOUND

Maple trees aflame by the river.

A lonely bench – Hobo’s?

Siege perilous

for homeless someone (shiver,

anonymous child of cold fortune).

Collateral damages

from various pillages

of community pillars... honorable men...

the violent bear it away.  Wind

blows through pinetops.

A salt wind, like to freeze.

& leaves turn bloody at the end

of October.  Washington surveys

Shawnee Ohio hills.

Marshals militia drills,

rankled by Crown authorities.

His real estate’s on shaky ground.

Who owns land?  Who owns

sea.  Of his bones

are coral made.  O steady sound

of middle C – circumference

& center of the keys.

The 88, a breeze

from Cairo paradise (our Providence).

Who be that aye-aye from before

the beginning of tomorrow?

C-Jonah beyond sorrow.

Sister-dove.  Your soft sheep-door.

10.7.18

eye in the level

replica of Roger Williams' compass, pocket sundial

SURVEY LINE

The pilgrim in the wilderness

like young George Washington

will draw a survey line

in order to project his progress

straight ahead, from point to point.

Primordial Providence

the paradisal focus –

your pen’s first instance.  Appoint

your 2nd Adam, then, Most High

to be the gold eye

in the level – bead the way

with your Accordion of earth & sky,

dream-song of host & guest alike.

My Christianity

is primitive, really.

This nazir chanting by the lake

was also Elohim; we sponged the vinegary

wine together, soaked

the dry bread – smoked

the peace pipe in his company.

My Providence is primitive as well.

Young Roger at the river’s

edge, his seekers, strivers –

welcomed, welcoming – a lunar shell

for pattern of a little government

upon her shoulder (Ocean

State).  Mirroring Sine

of Wave... rinsing tomorrow’s present.

9.14.18

stone for bread, bread for stone

ANCIENT DATE

The soupy heat slouches toward

July.  Flesh sags &

drips, we’re breathing und-

erwater.  Jonah’s gone overboard.

A billion fins of fans rotate,

create more heat.  Hobo

lies flat under a willow.

He daydreams of an ancient date

by Highland Water Tower; the whole town

spread before them, just

beyond the graveyard.  Lost

her name somewhere.  Don’t drown

me in false memories, he begs.

Canova’s statue (broken)

of George Washington

writes its own ave over his crossed legs.

Farewell, Columbia.  Guard well

her statue in the harbor.

Beggar not they neighbor.

Muzzle Nero, tripping up from hell.

That shimmering seine, the veil of Isis

shrouds the face of Henry’s

Clover.  Out of bleakness

of the grave, young spring may rise;

beyond the azure of the Golden Gate

one facet of euphoria –

one artophoria

of stone – revives... brings light to fate.

6.29.18

spring crucible

ASPHALT PATH

Yesterday your birthday, Papa.

92, mild ghost.  Sun-wheel

set at Swan Point... seal

of a woman’s self-extinction.  Ah,

woeful calendar (Coatlicue).

Strife of father & son.

Friday black sun,

aboriginal sin (hey ey

yo).  Here in Minneapolis

snow, interring April

in one wide hexagonal,

preserves a buried man in ice

(Resurrection Cemetery).

Henry ascends the asphalt

path from heart’s tumult

to frozen Father of his Country.

Washington Ave. Bridge.  Yet

(wobbling, wavering

within your shadowy

ring of flame) – dawn’s pale promise!

Man’s faithless diffidence his own

life sentence, we

depend upon your mercy

to raft us into Libertas again –

mysterious Jonah in the “33”

(Mars’ den) whose hum

breaches delirium,

wind-bred to share (Nazarene glee).

4.13.18

digging in the dirty green

AYE-AYE

The dirty green of the dollar bill.

Gardener George, earwigged

on one side (with a big

little Mona Lisa smile).

The eye over the pyramid (annuit

coeptis) on the other.

Levitating, mother!

Mammon, touching his limit –

a gilded pharaoh, forced to step

sideways (into the river-

sand).  Busy beaver

out of Illinois might be princeps

round here (nobody knows

til all the votes are counted).

We are all the Lord’s anointed

Preacher-Judge (siege perilous)

leers in the face of b-flat storm –

Cordelia, ascend

your throne, bend

everyone to teeming agape (love’s form).

The government shall be upon

his shoulder (right to left)

until the desolate bereft

& greedy soul relents – a human

Imogen emerges, lowly

& victorious.

Dancing the periplus

of Arg-Noah (144, aye-aye).

12.12.17

matrix of the capital

TINY ANCHOR

Charles L’Enfant painted a watercolor

panorama, 14 inches

by 7 feet long, which shows

the Continental Army by the Hudson River

at Verplanck’s Point (1782).

Its curator (Phil Mead)

once noticed what appeared

to be a mini-tepee notched in view –

looking vaguely familiar...

why?  That very canvas

tent (George Washington’s)

was standing in a nearby corner

of his own museum.  From tiny sketches

mighty plants may grow –

L’Enfant would later sow

the plans for D.C.’s marble stretches

(George’s tent of meeting thus

the matrix of the capital).

We are all infants, after all.

Whence comes this rolling wondrous

theatre in the round?  Each regiment

on the accompanying chart

plays its own part –

a seahorse anchor figuring Rhode Island

(Providence for African, Native 

American recruits).

Even Okean has roots –

one sign given, that we might live

                  *

like Jonah (which means turtledove)

descending, by enormous

& galactic routes

from lambent & egalitarian beehive

on high – the very cosmopolitan

& chaste kingdom of God –

chaste, as out of Novgorod

by way of Osip (Mandelstamian)...

Each local soul circles toward Providence

as moth toward firelight.

Only fly right

into the center of her blazing salience –

you’ll see the laws of city & country

meld to conformity

with that great mutuality

Martin proclaimed – God’s wakan charity.

                  *

This lonely river-path of Hobo

down the sky’s time-lapse

touches a key, perhaps.

His mother’s clay is rolling, so;

out of that gray whale’s brow of sadness

flows a solidarity

escried by Raven – see?

Au mer... À Mère I caw (southwest,

southwest)... Cautantowwit, or Noah’s

pilot, feeding crumbs...

deep distant drums

of Thunderbird.  Silence (Cahokia’s).

11.15.17

Hobo's New Year Address

VENETIAN GALLEYS

The gentle adagio of these

yellow butternut leaves

like Venetian galleys

cantering down into the grass.

The slim ribs & spine of each

a gilded replica

of that emerald armada

still tethered to its summer beech.

Prophetic microcosm, georgic

farewell speech.  The poem

wavers down to home

so... some big moody Amerique

or bottomland Berryman mound.

Hobo will mutter her.

He misses her forever

sunk by fratricidal wound.

We cannot remain free unless

we recognize each other

in ourselves, bro – so your

Uncle George cries in the wilderness.

Hobo would touch the iron swing,

its rust-corroded spring,

chi-rho, chi-rho.  Wing,

Raven, down to Mexico – sing

autumn’s monitory mirror.

Minotaur must turn anew.

Like Rosh Hashanah, you

shall too.  O Planet, hear.

9.21.17