through Narragansett smokehole

AGATE LAMP

A peaceful evening in late April

the trees barely budding

in mild light   while brooding

darkness rings   the besieged people

& this dissonance of visible   invisible

an indivisible fire   smoldering

criminals & saints   revealing

callous inhumanity    with humble

solidarity   courageous   all-compassionate

& in my flimsy gazebo

octagonal coracle or   Argo

with Sophie’s wind-chime   over the gate

delicate oak-leaf butter-knife design

tingling in the calm air   O

here in my Ariadne-lair   where

a Chartres J coils  toward her Eschaton

& my whisper follows Cautantowwit

through Narragansett smokehole 

southwest, southwest   while a soul-

hart sails back   to her monarch nest –

that circling square dance of Ocean beams

where the spirit of Jessie Ophelia

& Juliet Ravlin   abide in Thee   &

Eternity, O Eternity! cries Roger Williams

& you lift your agate lamp, Psyche

like a fiddlehead   in Holy-Land

& the soeur-coulombe of the Son

of Man   swerves   with a shining eye

4.27.20

chaired in the adamant of Time

WISDOM-BENCH

He was muttering in his sleep the whole time.

Of things seen & unseen,

emblems of earth & heaven – like

a man in his grave, waiting for his bones to rhyme

again.  His friend Hobo came from Ohio

whistling Carl Sandburg tunes,

Vachel Lindsay refrains;

his duds were dusty, raggedy, his health so-so;

he only loved the calm of the constant River

& the wide distant plains

& the ache in his heart.  Pains

of hard living made him smile (it goes on forever).

He himself was an old Yankee man.

Some Quaker dream tilted his mind

to the redemption of a world unkind,

& mad with rage – a providential plan.

The dream came out of West Branch

one fine day – the black marble

of Isis (planted at the Memorial)

a kind of emblem for her Wisdom-Bench

chaired in the adamant of Time, as Walt

declared.  & we are Hagia Sophia

with a million eyes, maybe… a sigh

instilled by otherworldly grace.  A bolt

of lightning from the Thunderbird.  Thus

Wisdom is justified in all her children –

settled on her lap of twinkling obsidian

beneath the steady circling of milky stars.

4.20.20

love is a subtle mode of gravity

PEACEABLE REPLY

Love?  Love is a subtle mode

of gravity, persuading

everything into its ring

via reverse-magnetic motherlode.

Implicit ground of adoration –

centered in that other

sprouting up like heather,

unaccountable (& yet akin).

The Petersburg raznochinets

who wrote, maybe

we are Hagia Sophia

with a million eyes… completes

that Galilean one, who said

you are light of the world

& so like sheep into fold

he goes, smiling into Ya-Neku.

So like that sonorous Adagio

building gradually upward

on frail threads, the sad

clown walks into her thundercloud

shadow.  Like Mary Magdalen

she follows the mild voice

of one who mediates

all force with dove-modulation –

her cooing sing-song tilt of wing-

span balancing the red

& blue with a rusty rod

of iron – his wand out of Sing-

                   *

Sing, his foot-pedal, bruised purple

as small Rhode Island

violet (one grain in hand

touching the resonant key of small people).

She bears the crux of all martyrdom

across the political spectrum

like Mater Dolorosa on some

Syrian plateau of desolate Rom;

yet every child’s candle flickers yet

on the anniversary of statehood

& Providence, in the law-code

charted for Restoration Day (kismet).

When Rome fell, & sheep scattered

into milky constellations,

whirling light-grains

penetrating countless catastrophic

neighborhoods of pitch-black space.

In the darkest of Dark Ages

the ratio on parched pages

scratched by severed stump of Maximus

shone like Einstein intuition –

Man is imago of your Divine

infinite plenitude… sign

lofted into deepest void-perdition;

there is no sovereignty like this.

To be the peaceable reply

to every trumped-up tyranny –

we all God’s children, sang the Empress.

2.20.20

relativity behavior at the end of May

NEF-TUNE

& what if all the Seekers, Roger’s progeny

– that prophet-salt of the earth –

assembled in an ark (Bertha

the birth-canoe)?  Like an almond eye?

Like tall Sophia-Top, spiraling from sky?

The quintessential star

of relativity behavior

in the Great Congregation, at the end of May

(5.29.1919, to be exact).  When Albert

raised a toast to the memory

of time & space, & we

felt that fire... like Baked Alaska in the desert.

Birthday for Ocean, constellate;

malingering little reprobate

always castigated by Bay State,

always flaming in a pentagram – complete

salt sea-bird tugboat-gal

who lofts Old Ironsides

to cosmic shipyard one Ides

of July (my Galilean madrigal).

It is the nef-tune, from the underside

of the sea, of the mind;

Love’s ecliptic incline,

like one grain of sand.  Wave, light... abide;

to launch us from our shadowy shells

& melancholy corners

into this brilliancy of yours...

all-human cradle where the hearth-fire dwells.

1.29.20

Ravenna is a potter's wheel

painting by Mary R. Gould, born 12.26.1927

SPIRAL HUT

Hobo moseys down his usual shore,

thinking of the finish line.

Plays with his river-sign,

his spiral hut of shoreline lore.

Someday there might be an algorithm

for the eyes in the mirror,

the project of the logosphere

curved beneath Beatrice-smile... leaf-skim

fluttering in Pentecostal glossolayea

round those pillars of Diana

stolen for Hagia Sophia

by Justinian (Solomon, I have outdone ye).

The builder’s signal of completion, the flag

of a little pine tree

planted like perfect akme

at the apex.  Unknown Soldier’s Rag

of worn linen.  Shakespeare’s cap

of happiness, he said,

that buried pot – not dead,

not even sleeping; where rays overlap

into a solid beam (centripetal matrix

of a million eyes).  It is

finished, this Poe-biz –

seraphic wayfaring Eureka-box

of pinecones, green acorns.  & the canoe

of flowering almond ribs...

your singing coracle of orbs,

suspended in accord from sapphire-blue.

12.26.19

only piano in town

CLAY BARN

6-yr-old Sophie curls up in the lap

of grumpy old Grandpa

to listen to Grandma 

read us the story of Jingle Bells.  Slap-

happy Mr. Pierpont, of Medford Mass.

watching 12 skating sliders

skim frozen circles (laughter’s

elves) runs next door to Mrs. Waterman’s

– only piano in town, to test his melody

& the rest is history

she’s ready for bed, isn’t she

Sophie’s growing up fast, Henry

The tall Norway pine at the prow

of the duplex, like a mast

climbing up toward one vast

frosty galaxy, with its Xmas lights in tow

(Grandpa’s dad’s project once, long ago)

they don’t glow anymore

but the duplex lies at anchor

like every ark, Egyptian barge, Ferrara canoe

like every nave, like every churnagogue,

like every Celtic coracle –

round as a 4-leaf miracle

of Columba, or Mayflower Compact (ship’s log

of covenanted sheep’s union);

round as lightswept dome

of Hagia Sophia, or home

sweet home (clay barn, Mississippian)

12.16.19

small icon, a gift of Elena Shvarts, poet of St. Petersburg

bridges of Hennepin County

PROOF-STONE

So many bridges flung across this river

like stitches on a wound –

their heavy iron-concrete bond

knitting a wintry Twin Cities together.

One thing is welded to another,

like the almond in a Venn

design – Cahokian

canoe of koinonia? – out of mother-

clay, spun wide... like risen bread,

or galaxies of diamond fire.

So lights flash over limestone

mire, through night-black thunderhead.

& Hobo, hunched beside the riverbank

is like the shadow of Henry

as Henry is of lowly

Galilean king (his incognito prank)

– as are we all, in that high diagram

checkering light across a dome

in old Egyptian Byzantium

(proof-stone of perpendicular wisdom).

Like Hagia Sophia with a million eyes...

rimming the twin-bent boughs

of swelling arcs (in Voronezh)

where East & West, mud-rings & skies

are melded in your almond lips’ ellipse

& God & Imago

& world & Churnagogue

are sanctified, sealed with a kiss

of peace (pax, agape – Wakan Tanka);

where Rio del Espiritu Santo

whispers I love you so

& Hobo walks with sister Joan (Columbia).

12.3.19

perhaps we are Hagia Sophia

JAPANESE NOTE

Down by Mirror Lakes, in Mendelssohn

Henry collects the silver

trading cards of a younger

self.  Still innocent (the future Hobo-man).

In that Providence springtime,

when we were setting out.

Pure Japanese note

of your own childhood (high chime

of Tokyo folksong).  Your Florentine

round pallor, papery

sheepglow (Butterfly).

Who knew I’d be the priggish Pinkerton

of Rensselaerville epithalamia?

Til that blindfolded boy

waving a Yankee flag (say,

can you see?) – sows stony drama...

Puccini’s on the turntable, at Amiata.

Her spectral Iris-wings

loft LIBERTY (to thee we sing)

unto this microcosm of liublyu stigmata.

Yet, perhaps... we are Hagia Sophia

with a million eyes.

The crucifixion of surprise

curves down, humbled with apatheia

– still time, still time, to turn

from the spent spirit

to that glad esprit

reflecting oui (edging Ravenna urn).

11.18.19

Cordelia in the wasps' nest

AUTUMN RITE

In the car coming back from the memory unit

I catch the tail end of Mahler’s 9th

the slow slow strings’ fading strength

bent like snarly willow limbs into some resonant

sweet culmination (ancient Mendelssohn

elegy in mind).  Autumn’s

rust-blood golden sun’s

quintessence now, O silent one?

Cordelia in the wasps’ nest, at the axis

of the earth... Lear, trembling

like an oak gall wasp – bleeding,

stung by the crypt-keeper (Euderus

Set).  The wasp within the wasp, Osip –

Shakespeare’s quaint acorn-

crown of happiness (shorn

pharmakon).  & shalt thou drink my cup?

The box-within-a-box, the matryoshka

toy?  Like bloody JFK

in Dallas, on a Friday –

Jackie’s pink tiara (autumn leaf regalia)...

The river of violin sound measures time

to its serene delta, my friend.

& the tree (Hagia Sophia with a million

eyes) harbors the wind like a nursery dome –

you hear the sound of it (that waterfall

through twin cities, Berryman)

but you know not whence (my son)

it comes (oak’s Galla rite, imperial).

10.15.19

a partial answer for Tom D'Evelyn

GREEN SAGE

We are born as the story goes, in

medias res – through the hands

of the midwife, to lands

of motherly milk & honey, the Pine

Island of family circles... onto

the clay wheel of slow

seasons – rusty merry-go-

round, with its quaint iron echo...

& you recall how the sun casts a shadow

while the river floats an image;

imagination’s green sage

is always personal, someone you know

& so the circle of epistemology

whorls back to its source.

Whitman shaken by the hearse

Dante dreaming Beatrice

body forth reality – adhesive,

compagnevole, suffused

with ineffable Providence –

thy feather-light & graceful Love

the origin & end of Universe

O playful Alpha-&-Omega.

All poetry is drama

& all storytelling is your father’s

microcosmos; all wisdom is Hagia Sophia

beneath their human dome of light,

& that Gateway Arch might

mark the navel of your motherland’s Cahokia.

6.26.19

a merry caw-caw for Thanksgiving

GIVE THANKS

We give thanks for life’s poetry

which arrives (unexpected)

through gates of neglected

farmyards.  For the spare mystery

of solitary lighthouses, beaming

steady wheel-spokes

(Rhode Island folks

know what we say, dreaming

sea-woven Narragansett night).

A merry caw-caw

semaphores her law

by roof-smoke... Raven’s last rite;

like Roy Van Doublegram – cross-eyed

matryoshka doll

(owl in a well) –

Hagia Sophia’s multiocular Argo-hide

(serpentine tesserae’s bronze

glint, like Quetzalcoatl

drifting up from Mexico).

For being lifted up to heaven’s

dome, by way of Providence

(O supernatural Grace).

Who is that Falcon-Ace

on Ibis-wing, speeding to silence?

Emily, Cordelia... be

with me now.  Will

must climb volcano-hill...

Love’s Istanbul (Turkey).

11.20.18

Hagia Sophia with mermaid eyes

TATTOO-BASKET

                                    for Sophie, on her birthday

She shines like a little smile of light,

your happiness.  Shot through

with violets, with rue

of yellow-gold... a sea-green Amphitrite.

She swam from a box out of the bottomland.

Big Muddy concept –

buried in refuse, inept

mentalities.  Blind eye-in-hand,

dread fright of bloody bandage-men.

I stood on my headwaters,

the only Falls that matters –

Mill City, where they grind the grain –

a nauseated Hamlet, dizzy

with green v-vertigo.

Boxed rivers overflow.

He’s Hobo now, or Ishmael, fire-fizzy;

curled up in a tattoo-basket,

floating in the womb

of his own dream-doom

to Gulf of Mexico (Nantucket?)...

where butterflies of poetry

emerge as monarchs

from sea-chrysalides

& sketch fine arcs on pottery

insouciantly, with haunted grace.

Winking tesserae,

unscrambled... Hagia Sophia

with mermaid eyes (each facet-face).

8.21.18

bring it all to bear (she-bear)

OPEN SEA

This Hobo, then – who he?

Lounging by Mississippi

lumpy, caw-caw-hokey

groaning accidentally for She-

Bear – as for primordial Iris.

Great purple monarch,

Theodora in birchbark –

like unto Micòl, or MLK (who is

& was & will be, by the light

of Milky Way).  His Big

Rock Candy brig

like a Black Sea barred-owl frigate

slants downstream, toward Colchis

or N’Orleans golden fleece –

& that arc, that St. Louis

centerpiece, shaped an L for his

Osiris lance (his buoyant flatboat

horizontal).  Troubled in mind,

some perpetual blind

haunt (old King Unfort, behind his moat).

& the whole American Dream lies

like dustbowl wasteland

of frosted heart, hard hand.

Sleepwalkers, unredeemed Henries

                     *

                     *

yoked to their stock.  An iron band

for an age of iron years,

until they can weep tears

again... up to the waist in river-sand.

Providence is in our eye,

he mumbles to himself.

In Ocean State – elf-

green, Rose Island red... (sigh).

Immaculate, born from the sea...

baptism for Columbia,

the Jonah-Dove.  Selah.

An overlay, a palimpsest... a little tree

of life & liberty... an ark

bearing a covenant

of loving-loyal parent,

child – for you, America.  Embark.

Into the open sea of universality,

where the human fingerprint

whorls to its fundament –

that knot of radiant mutuality –

the heart’s own ruby (in a sapphire ring).

So melt the iron with a diamond

flame, graft flowering almond

to the great oak’s mistletoe, & bring

the limping Hobo-King into her limpid

shade, moss-green & grey...

Hagia Sophia, who shall be

statutes of Liberty – dancing, embodied.

6.8.18

serene enchantment

ROYAL SEAL

Springtime earth bears a secret promise

for that unknown child

somewhere, today – mild

summons of the midnight stars

foretell the coming of her Magi, too.

May burgeons toward her

flowery grand fanfare

beneath its vault (red, lilac, blue) –

a royal seal of lilac coronation;

within that dome’s one

multiocular panopticon

prophetic voices merge in exaltation –

serene enchantment of perennial life

blooming toward light itself

(O fragrant almond staff

sprouting sweetness – beyond all strife).

The infant nested in a great oak’s shade

smiles in soft seaborne air.

Ocean will prepare

her Restoration Day – as you were made

in the beginning, so shall you be again.

Shining in Paradise,

where all the rivers rise;

gemstones of blazing men & women

awakening from mind’s blindness.

Under an azure-orange arch

they sail... grail-search

fulfilled – Love’s everflowing happiness.

5.24.18

all glory, laud & honor

PUDGY PALM

The homeless Mandelshtams – Nadezhda,

Osip – shelter in the Hermitage

beneath a Rembrandt image.

Theotokos with Child – da, da –

the yellow-black goldfinch, perched

upon his pudgy palm.

Invisible museum

in the mind.  Like Hagia Sophia (arched

Argo of a million eyes) whorled

in one prow... her kelson

Love’s bright apparition –

equilibrium of peaceful world.

All glory, laud & honor...

the sensus comunis

of common good is

at your service (humble, poor) –

Franciscan mule of stubborn heart

whose fast is doing

(in twilight fast fading) –

out to the glimmer-rim of art

back to the ember-glowing hearth.

The honor of the civitas

so shaped by selflessness

into a form of equity – in truth

& mirth, transparency... your wings

in flight, O Tyche-Liberty –

humble Columbia (Black Sea

to Golden Gate) Nadezhda brings.

4.30.18

Who killed Robin Redbreast?

HAGIA SOPHIA

Already the first snow saunters down

at dusk (All Saints’ Day).

Robins nibble cherry

crabapples; waxwings are flown.

Some gray squirrel (squirreled away

in Book Depository?)

broke the back of Sophie’s

jack o’lantern... strange display

splayed into Dia de los Muertes.

So Jeff the Fireman

crossed into a bar (man

overboard).  Barranca... Beatrice...

man who went to live with Indians.

Ghost dance, compadre;

Dennis Banks (hey ey

yo).  Eagle feathers in the grandstands

quoting LBJ, ironically (“treaties”).

Home, home on the range

(small fry).  My ange

d’or – in the abyss, like Cassiopeia’s

fireball.  Wax melted in the wings.

Hamlet, his father’s vortex

seal – lay off that, Tex.

Untouchable guitar strings

(hellhound on my trail).  The man’s

in jail.  A thin blue line

separates the whisper mine

from outer darkness (someone plans

                    *

ahead ahead).  Pumpkin or Trumpkin,

orange oak bolete...

mushroom cloud.  Yeti...

this is the forest primeval (again).

American robins gather by the fire.

In the Bruegel scene –

where the old women

stoke the blaze with bones (ire

smoke-signals, from Columba).

Globilized indifference

in a culture of comforts

– soap bubbles... insubstantial... ah

King of Pumpkins!  How the wax melts!

My soul leans inward

toward your abject & absurd

reward, Coatlicue – so many wolf pelts!

In the bright snow of Siberia

the cold blue fire burns

through bronze lids.  Eyes

turn in your direction...  Selah,

my friend.  La vida es sueño.

Poetry = transcript.

Out of the drowsy crypt

she glances, see... muy bueno.

The double doves of the peacock dome

resolve the red & blue

to violet... so you

are Hagia Sophia (hippodrome).

11.1.17