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

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

HIGH SOPHIA

My mother’s golden watercolor

of a corner by the porch

door – let us approach

this summer morning autumn splendor

as it was, & will be once again.

An open door in Hopkins

Minnesota spins

its Manitou of teeming pain

et vin (an infinite childhood);

Alighieri in Ravenna

summons high Sophia

in the guise of Beatrice... would

she still circumference all human

knowledge in her arms?

Beyond Hell’s harms

stands Boethius – Consolation

rhymes (decline & fall of Rome)

with Dante’s futurismo

(Roma onde Cristo

è Romano) – one bright sunlit home.

Paisans, turkeys, sheep draw near.

The meal c’est commencé.

Massasoit & Williams here play

host – what was a funeral pyre

unfolds to cornucopia.

The crux of natural law

is liberty’s Commedia –

all-human Earth joins Milky Way.

11.25.15

Time is of the essence

I was never much good at baseball.  My last major stint was with the Hopkins (MN) Mighty Mites, when I was about 10 (ca. 1962).  Purple uniforms.  I remember the baseball field seemingly down in my bones somewhere (beneath the amnesiac brain).

In high school (where I focused on soccer) I had a very special English teacher, John Anderson, who radiated encouragement & good cheer to would-be writers like me.  In our school at that time, each teacher, and every senior, had to make an oration before the whole student body.  Mr. Anderson, for his part, read a baseball poem.  I can't recall the poet, or much of the poem - only the refrain : "time is of the essence".  It was about the national game.  I think I was so impressed by his performance that a few years later, when it was my turn to speak, I read a poem of my own (not about baseball).

This poem is about baseball, in a way.  It's also about iconic people, role models so-called.  In fact it's a kind of allegorical poem.  If you think of Dante's explication of the fourfold allegory of his Divina Commedia, this thing exhibits a similar symbolic layering.  How does it go - literal, moral, allegorical, anagogical?  Something like that.  On one of these levels lurks the idea that "Yogi Berra" - man, person - allegorically "stands for" something deeper, more universal.  But I'll leave it at bat.  Stee-rike!

HOME PLATE

                                the game ain’t over till it’s over

How the figure of a man at 90

(any man or woman, see)

becomes transparently

rough diamond, somehow... Yogi?

Behind home plate, in empty lot

traced over waste land,

he crouches – hokey Panda

Bear (wry antic square root

bassist of the base, Neanderthal).

Signals from the crotch

each crypto-kingfish pitch

plumb perfect (Sasquatch cone-ball).

Yankee stars wheel over stadium

where Little Bear paints

himself into pinstripe

corner (gray silo Te Deum);

Big Bear, worried, waves him off

Indian mound (a brave

9 innings) – takes a dive.

Let’s go explore the bottom of

the harbor, little lamb of mine.

I’m gonna let you shine.

Beatrice was a 9-

man game – for 28 seasons

soused us with spray of lilac

Liberty bells (for free).

Between you & me

the wave flows everywhere, Smolak.

9.24.15