the melodeon of civil peace

GREEN PALM

This silver light-pull on the black pathway

like a miniature dragon or

sperm whale (grey Minotaur

immured in Ocean labyrinth)... Ariadne

dropped it here for me, maybe

(bowline from safety net

strung beneath Golden Gate,

or strand of hair turned silvery

along the wheel of time & gravity).

In him the root of the matter,

wrote Cotton Mather –

he meant that turbulent sectary,

mild Roger Williams.  An apple root

it was, the legend holds;

clasped in earth-folds,

his buried limbs became sweet fruit

(at Prospect Terrace, where his bones

were laid).  Sweet peace,

he called it; a release

into that harmony among distinctions

Roger christened Providence, & we

e pluribus unum –

a spiritual freedom

planted in magnanimity;

a willingness to mingle tares

& wheat, so infant conscience

tried by experience

find its own starry stairs

              *

& not by force, but gentleness

its ripening prepare

to climb past nightmare

to the melodeon of civil peace.

So gather up stray iris-strands,

Henry.  That self-same

moonlit trail (slim

path between wrath & Rhode Island’s

liberté) was Alighieri’s narrow way

between Imperium,

Ecclesia... low hum

of Jonah-Beatrice (out of the grey

cloud-surf of Ocean River).

Garden & wilderness,

Solomon’s shepherdess...

airy Sophia in Hopkins windhover...

O delicate light-threads, pendentive

on twin pillars, anges

d’orange...  Who arranges

your catenary smiles?  You dive

with her dive, you rise with her rise,

surfacing... Hail, Jonah!

Out of the whale, Jeanne-

Arc!  The mercy in your eyes

– wonder in ours!  A gold mandorla

where the twin points meet –

meld into one – & greet

the Union with green palm... Alleluiah!

6.9.17

down here on the ground

CHILLY BLOWS

A red-tailed hawk shows white beneath,

sloping high in the cobalt

blue – pivoting afloat

on air – freewheeling in the teeth

of chilly blows (from Canada).

Down here on the ground

clay thins to the grind,

shatters like ice – power’s arcana

plates a hard face on the mirror,

the barrel.  His scapegoat

brands our feet by rote,

his toothy mustache splinters the car.

In the cosmogram from Amen Corner

another bird hums

through dusty spokes – drums

emerald beryl-wings across your

grave circumference, Columbia.

Your adamant cheer, Mother –

whose fleet flute-font rings here,

rings there, rings over yonder... ah,

brave wings!  Braiding Ocean River

with an Esperanto-Roma

glossolalia

hums into the matrix – shiver

these bony timbers onto sparkling

shores!  Nested in Galilee,

a grafted refugee

on new-found land... thrush, darkling.

11.9.16

Atlantic weather

HOME FREE

Set adrift down Providence streets,

blown along by chilly air,

this autumn Atlantic weather

in the Ocean State... gray cloud-fleets

follow birthday Hobo, his big-baby

muttering – a nonsense

tremolo from Jonah’s

whale-gut habitat (her kingdom’s maybe

someday).  Like Apollinaire slaloming

dolphin-rime atop a marble

door in Rimini, warbling

his trompette marine (something

about a Frisco treasure chest

in a hurricane eye) – or

Bluejay Slocum, Shaker

salt in pauper’s Dauphin-quest...

your sailor’s air, so fortunate

pipes down from the future

on Ariadne lure.

Hookline for deep sinker – bright

hand who flew from the poop deck

waving from waves his

palm-leaf radius

(JJ-pendant, octahedral speck).

Wisdom’s justified in all her children

plays out the line from high-

strung Miriam.  Sky milk-

train sounds – all home free then.

10.1.15

October periscope

Along the Minnehaha

Poetry enlists the descriptive, inscriptive, epitaphic, encryptionologous powers of writing - which are obviously formidable - in its campaign of resistance to time.  The poet stubbornly proposes a spiritual orthogonal (an upright L) in opposition to the horizontal flow of history, events, distractions, decay, necessity, time, death, chores, etc, etc.

Perhaps I'm delusional, yet by the same token I do have a sense of being one of the most indomitably resistant poets in America.  Everything I do in this realm seems to oppose the practical, the social, the amenable, the common-sensical, the professional approach.  It's been like this for so long I've lost all perspective on it, anyway.  I do what I do, it is what it is, it's become second nature.  People may object to the obsessive-repetitive characteristics.  Perhaps they're right.  I have no way of knowing.  Let the chips crunch where they may.

STEELY PRONG

Heidi, it’s been many a year

since we went a-Maying together

down Arthur St., in Hopkins

(Glastonbury? Mendelssohn) –

but next door, in the autumn rain

a misty hawthorn silvers

bright chartreuse berries

for the birds (windhover, crane,

starling) who may alight someday.

Just down the ancient lane

my father’s granite urn

abides, along the Minnehaha;

ravens stitch the cooling air

above the stream – a shade

those oak-leaf hands once made

over our heads (good chevalier-

Samaritan).  Yon turtledove

coos from a russet square –

fieldstone embrasure, where

vaults rise on sable ribs (alcove

beyond alcove, into the light).

Bring me your thorny ring-

around-the-rose, Heidi;

I’m ready now to dance & sing

athwart the maypole-chariot.

One drop of scarlet raven-

ink, one graven letter’s

steely prong... (one grail-griot).

9.30.15

Hawthorn in the rain