Philadephia harbor

SHADE TREE

Stewart’s old print of Philadelphia harbor

(1821).  The great shade tree

by the shore, so peacefully

imposing.  What’s America for?

The benign bonheur, hovering over

our intricate pursuits

of same.  The one who loots

forcefields of dominance, mon frère,

may never find this canopy

of feathery leaf-

grace, hopeful belief...

for we the people brook no satrapy –

relentless justice of the golden rule

the frame of human dignity;

law’s equilibrium of equity

our guarantee of commonweal.

My own boat pilots back to Mendelssohn

so slowly, through such vast

flat riverlands.  Her mast

a pine tree split from almond Someone –

cloudy shadow of a smile (O shady oak).

Your heavy clay, Coatlicue –

the chilly violence you

still portray – fired to a silver spoke

as fine as spiderweb, becomes a sign.

Your limestone epitaph –

a serpentine & fractal staff

fractured for us, broken for bread & wine.

5.17.18

arise, iris

GOLDEN RULE

An iris opened on the first morning

in June.  Like a Byzantine

empress, rich purple &

gold – her petals butterfly wings

or flying buttresses at Chartres.

In the mirror of her eye

a spark of fiery beauty

keeps us tethered from the start

to time & clay & gravity.

What we know of day

stems from the way

her lullaby enclosed Night Sea

with human shores.  So poetry,

say Anna, Nicolai,

Osip; the warm akme

glows like a sun-hearth, humanly;

so that we feel at home on earth,

where all our rights & dignity

are cherished – held inalienably

near, defended, justified – their worth

continually savored by our freedom.

This the bright consensus

won by Athens once,

& by Jerusalem – that liberty of Rome

as well, as well-water.  Oasis

of mild light & shade,

Athena-keel for well-made

coracle – pilot’s compass

              *

through confounding waves – hardy braid

Arachne spun for us

to cross Pontus Axeinos

(Lethe too, returning from the dead).

Those immense majestic figs

haunting a promontory

in Pacific Sydney

guard the Observatory – wisdom’s pegs

around a mounted, tented hologram

of Southern Cross.  Diamond

of floating light – almond

icosahedron – luminous emblem

of the 6-way star Black Elk beheld

on prairie underneath wide sky

                  *

           *           *

                  *

invisible Manitou we travel by

all night, to where bridge-rivets weld

phenomena to Thanksgiving.

Kind circuit of a whisper-

dome, thy Presence clear

& sure Love-blessings bring!

That ghost dance out of Resurrection

Cimetière – when Buried

Man became unburied

after three days in the ocean-

chest of earth – concluded with a sail

due north, to Ocean

River, where it all began;

& now, like Jonah out of mother whale

                  *

or like Carlotta out of Vertigo

a little charley-horse

tightened its muscle-force

around the oaken knee of Sampo

(read : Humanity) amid thick shade

of English oaks (Fig-

Newton Township – dig?).

An acorn Lincoln-logos made

branched into spine & ribs & mast; 

the human rights of Edward

Coke transmuted seaward

in good Williams’ boat; at last

the courageous limb bore fruit – Soul

Liberty.  Where Alighieri

drew the line, we

carry on – our freedom’s in the whole

Thanksgiving Bowl of civil rights.

You cannot chain the wind

of smiling Manitou, nor bind

Creation with your rabid fights,

O fanatic unseasoned fools!

Free mind like lightning

(your dead branches blasting)

lifts just Jonah with her Golden Rule

& adds the pearl of high Sophia

Jesus chanted, Francis

planted... holy kiss

of cosmic Union – azure everlasting Gaia.

6.2.17