the ordinary Union

KNIT WOOL

                 Eternity, O Eternity! That is our business.

                                                       – Roger Williams

She watches crows play in the sky

above her balcony.

Her dregs of memory

transmute to gaiety, give death the lie.

Cautantowwit was Raven-Lord

of Narragansetts.  Old

Canonicus told

Roger how dead souls were borne toward

Mexico, far off southwest...

Rog quilled it down.

That chief of great renown

was kind to him.  Knit wool is best

around head, limbs & heart

when winter ice descends.

I’m dreaming, friends.

One campfire (circling) is all my art.

The Red Wing river-clay is heavy,

as my mother knows.

O the harsh blows

that fall like thunder (Romeo, Julie)...

The body’s weight is catenary

Golden Gate (so

Jasper shows).  Blow,

Manitou... bring back the glory

of the ordinary Union.  It shall be

– when we return to Thee,

from sea to shining sea –

uncommon good (benevolent Eternity).

11.29.17

evening of the year

TIRED HAND

November is the evening of the year.

Peasants in Bruegel scenes,

old Hobo has-beens

cluster by each barnyard bonfire.

Smells of farm & mill & stream,

the salt of drying fish.

Legends of Gilgamesh,

Leviathan.  Earth’s drowsy dream

wherein these van der Weyden faces

peer, like wildflowers

(like elemental creatures).

Matrix of sky & sea places,

of perishable limestone prints

from whence a soul emerges

smiling... Demiurge’s

horsehair, flickering (Francesca’s hints).

Medieval bread & wine of things.

Cascade of bridges over

other bridges – river

washing under massive rings.

The solidarity of timebound

beasts, breathing together

under whip, rein, tether.

Muddy, between Arch & Mound

looms... pregnant with Spiritu.

What Piero knew,

Bruegel & Jasper too –

shade-palm, surrounding you

                    *

& me – stretching toward Pacific blue.

I layer watercolors so,

over crepuscular canoe

hid in Italian garage (one almond clue).

The limestone waterfalls in Rimini

like tears across a scallop-

sign.  The curtains drop,

the veil gives way... a human unity

of suffering is all our play.

Da Vinci, with tired hand

limns one command –

love one another, every day.

For we are one.  A multitude,

personified.  Benevolent

Ancient of Days bent

each into the mirror’s flood,

together – riverflow of heart-

veins from the earth

welling to fiery hearth –

lenticular sunset, plangent cloud-art.

So spinning from primordial rose

the golden maize of Chartres

guides you to its Artist...

Daedalus, not Minotaur; Grace

Ravlin, not some puppet-master

in the Kremlin.  Shadow

of Mona Lisa grin... you

rise before the fall (Easter).

11.10.17

O splendiferous butternut

SALT-CUBE

September butternuts bombard the ground,

soft lime-green globes a-burst

with rich black compost-

muck.  By genealogy of sound

they must descend from Milky Way

on high; from some black hole

of fiery Moloch-El

shifting the gravitational display

plummeting like an otfe-stone

out of St. Peter’s burg

to vertiginous epilogue

(Akhmatova-agate, or Pushkin-

bone).  Sealed with a raven-knife

tattoo, absinthe still-life –

l’Affaire Dove-Sister-Wife,

mired in a faro-game of civil strife.

Her smile’s invisible as air.

Now Phoenix is on fire

& flooded Lone Star Empire

waits for Milly the Kid to appear;

up here in Minneapolis, Frank Gehry’s

fishtail art museum

harbors Hartley’s muse.  Glum

Crane surfacing as white shark – hairy

situation! & out the window, there’s

Berryman’s burnt span –

marooned sad son of Man

abridged to riveted soul-tears.

                   *

Some autumn in King Lear, mayhap

(John’s doggèd copy?)

may Heav’n shed mild mercy-

milk through these blind spokes, old Pap.

It’s waiting for you, Cain, McCain –

open your magnanimity

to gratitude!  See

to the superflux...  She comes again

light-feathered through your heart –

Cordelia, Columbia;

unscrolls the epigraphia

footnote on warped LP (dappled 8-part

harmony) – spectrum of a weedy

Jonah-flag.  Within gray

scales, smoke-signals (hey

ey yo) her hand waves complimentary

colors – black earth, jungle green

& orange flaring yellow-

gold (passage to indigo);

red, white & cinder (ultramarine)

complete the ashen diamond

salt-cube of Manitou

(that Hiawatha 1-3-2) –

whose handspin sets a table ronde

for Pilgrim as for Wampanoag

& etches mene mene tekel

onto Minotaur’s tough Jekyll-

hide (only a promise, Nadia-Mag).

9.7.17

a flower for Bloomsday

CIRQUE MATRIX

Gray Hobo-bird faces a problem :

how to save his own long

featherweight fern song?

How to rewind a strung-out poem?

Effigies & icons flashing by

like ripples in his eye –

Burchfield, El Anatsui...

Hartley, Martin, Klimt... Johnny

Jasper... fond winter raven-

oeuil of Master Bruegel...

Pompey, in the empty well

of Yahweh, was befuddled – No One

There.  The clear plein air of Quaker

meeting house, of Shaker

chair.  The carpenter’s

simplicity of Philadelphian law-

oracles.  We hold these truths...

But Hobo’s murmuring his

Nil Reed Candace house;

his prairie wind blows wild (Ruth’s

trail through mazy corn, tracking

Boaz from Goshen-land).

With poem-in-a-can

in hand (his pemmican) & Red Wing

Thunderbird-Woodpecker perched

atop his hat, he moseys,

slouching, sea to sea;

aboard his polar bear canoe (birch-

                 *

light) he circulates a mystery –

where be this Henry Church

round whom leaf-sundials march?

Planted in Resurrection Cemetery?

Or hidden in a holm oak tree?

The painted whisper gallery

enshades invisibility.

Will he sleepwalk forever, Poetry?

The milkweed monarch fans meekness.

This moth is camouflaged

brown dust.  The sagebrush

rolls through red deserts, the cedars

pine for Juniper (slate-blue).

Time’s broom sweeps clean

but tiny seeds remain.

A microcosmic mustard-yellow

gyroscope (spun in Ravenna

backwater) balances

Galilee on Providence;

the bicycle with one duo-antenna

twirls its silver spokes into

a rose-wheel window.

Where did Harry go,

Hobo?  He’s hidden in Otranto

glass.  He’s riding Pegasus

into a cirque matrix –

cartwheeling carny tricks

as Henry Flower Wilderness.

6.16.17

by old Bronze River

PROVIDENCE ROSE

Every day’s a sabbath day

for Hobo in retirement.

He drowses, full content

by old Bronze River (jasper, say –

carnelian, or sard).  On an empty bench

left for Henry once

in Dante’s Providence;

muttering seek ye the good, mensch –

avoid evil.  That would be a start.

The natural conscience

inheres in us; hence

dignity of life abides at heart

like some inalienable hearth-fire,

wants but a spark

to swivel toward magnetic

North (up near Itasca, where

scampers el Baby Rio del Espiritu).

That’s his geography –

some Hart-biography

sketched by the circle of a grey-blue

palm (O Thou smoky Hand

of Fire) – lightening the clouds

with limestone pigeon-crowds

& Jonah-spray... playful Leviathan!

O chaste & ancient liberties

free men & women found

promising iris-ground

out of primordial charities

              *

when Pharaoh was scapegoat too

& idols of the king

morph into Arty-thing

or potsherd red-white-blue

jewel-eye... old Noah’s galley

wakening in Galilee,

when ordinary Mary

hums a grass-green prairie

ray.  The light of Providence

shines out of living things

her omnipresence – springs

on breezy air (moist & immense)

into the metamorphoses

of human times, places –

so many steeplechases

in one race!  Four horses

at Clop-Clop Ellipse rounded

the bend by Hobo’s bench –

each iron bit they clench

forged in a molten sun-crowned

whisper-salience.  Providence

Rose crossed over the line

in first.  Bright human-

divine dervish foot-dance –

key pivoter in clay, O starfish

sun-Leviathan –

O luminous Kid of Man

in cloud-basilica (original Ish).

6.5.17

Tom the Woodpecker

LAST NIGHT

My muddled speech, this tangled veil...

like these mingled branches

of an oak triad – spring’s

catkins green-gold (skylight-pale).

Crane’s last night in the dark Gulf.

He teeters toward the sea

aboard the Orizaba –

absolute zero, Abba’s Tower... wolf-

shark mouth of heartless Minotaur.

Cracked glaze of Manitou

might double-cross you

into salt-grey void, pegged charioteer!

– while Hobo ambles blind toward

center of the maze.

Cassini, in a crystal haze

hugs close the knife-beak sword

of Saturn’s rings.  A Saarinen-

style ark, wind-surfing

into her 7th ring

of fire – fuse-molten onion-

dome (midéwé Mendelssohn).

Walk through mandorla,

hums submarine 484...

Specific massive planetary Galilean

gravity here clusters in a coal-

black hole of Memphis

diamond (direction 6).

At marrow of the tree : oak-bole

                 *

Thomas the Woodpecker ate

into a little apostolic

room.  Darkness so thick

only a Thunderbird might penetrate.

This quipu-knot of seared wood

is double-bound (veiled

mystery, inviolate).

Only the Nazir-dancer Ghost could

walk through walls, only the Twin

could feel his wounded palms.

As the film rewinds (alms

for a morning soul) a theremin

spooks everyone – the living flame

of Beatrice-Juliet

flares orange-emerald yet

through black flags   of the same

bridge   where Columbia flutters   red

white blue   & Jonah

(azure   jasper)   joins

wheel with salty wheel   the dead

rise   from their graves   the poison

scar of scary Scriptures

cured   with ironic sutures

when the Republic   of the all-human

makes mutual amends   in welded

fire   Saturnian arc

of painful truth   mark

twain   the river-depth   Elohim healed

4.26.17

the tender green

INDIAN GRAVE

The tender green fans out in sprays

now, over the trees

by the river.  Hobo sees

a little rise, like an Indian grave (Scythian?)

through cottonwoods – a salience.

Here Mrs. Sippy Nile

meets the 4 Grail

streams – Po (Eridanos),

Avon, Neva, Voronezh.

The raven is a dove

by day.  The paths of love

merge in a lattice-nest (collage

of gray clouds in circumference

of radar palm) where Jonah,

from the salty eye

of hurricane, flutes wholeness

(restoration).  My simple stick man-

woman, caved-in

charcoal Job, has been

the universal algorithm – toon

of Empire or Democracy, depending

on the rope they knotted

(quipu linen, rotted

on the mountaintop).  Swaddling

kid, Vallejo baby.  Lincoln

logs cradle the guest

fresh from wilderness

of ruin (arc of Constantine)

               *

lit by milky Okeanos

whence a black stone

fell, judged by no one –

Petersburg akme (nostos).

Impenetrable wisdom of

Columbia... the dove

of liberty, hove-

to – an alien corn-trove

in that placid Atlantic harbor,

lifting her copper torch

of caritas (scorch-

welded like a bolted nut) over

the twinkling arbor of a bent planet.

The nations tremble, the old

Winnebago starts cold –

rumbles into mobile mercy-net;

Thunderbird circles to Red Wing

becoming human being

in the mirror of Sing-Sing

(bright angle of prism-thing).

She was woodpeckered to a tree

like some Raven-Bluejay

out Oregon way.

Crossroads of simplicity –

a monarch butterfly in Mexico

could not have sung better

with keel o’ green cedar

or almond in Quauhnahuac (ey yo).

4.17.17

Willow River twilight

ANOTHER YULE

Civilization is a natural good.

Valleys are honeycombed

with anthills – tombed

with moral titans (Lincoln would

live up to his Memorial).

Government’s innate,

then – our pleasant fate

to be so compagnevole,

says Alighieri (after Harry

Woodpecker).  D.C.

marbled with majesty

will have a double Jubilee

this year – May 29th (the K

of Camelot’s birthday);

crowds cry hurray

up to the pint of vanishing

& glory glory hallelujah.

I love my country too.

But pride, you know,

leads oft to suicide – King Saul,

alas, fell on his sword, & Henry’s

Clover (sad antithesis

of photosynthesis) was

mortised into concave penury

(her veil of Isis hoovered out

of Iowa).  Her star

twirls like Ishtar

above a Willow River twilight

               *

where gold prairie meets the far

horizon (at the green

mountain, where shriven

penitents climb to the door).

Pride be the world’s blockade.

Banners of orange black

& green (by Jasper Jack)

are complementary, not made

for nought.  Pete? Smoky Pete’s

still lively, though John’s

jotting paper crayons

with encaustic slivers now.  Wheat’s

blonde for Brother Jim’s Great

Purple Hairstreak – what

a butterfly!  Yet

there’s no sketchy moral shortcut

to self-centered celebrations

for a nation, in this world

of woolly worms curled

into cottonwood canyon-

cocoons.  No idle soul-solace

– an oxymoron in

the China cookie tin.

True penitence proceeds apace,

slowly, like Frank’s old shaky mule

inching to San Francisco.

Sorrow made your child go

sailing.  Grief tacks up another Yule.

3.16.17

figure for equality

DOUBLE LINE

The Mississippi mottled with ice

a milky translucence

in the limpid air.  Sense

of coral rings solidifying.  Twice

& twice... smoky astigmatism

of a sundog rainbow.

Miss Destiny, Hobo.

Frescoed Siena formalism –

sweet couch of Pax, Justitia,

grave horsehair salience.

A gray circumference

of flags, targets... the palm of Jonah

read into fragile cat’s-cradle

or spiderweb.  A disk

of gold nailed to a casque

(louis, doubloon) – mandala-medal

for Hamlet’s mettle (or Macbeth).

Time circles on a nail;

therein hangs a tail.

Serious blasts off the mast of death.

The little copperplate landscape

of Tower Hill (the Witch’s

Hat) my mother etched

reminds me of Big Bear’s last scrape –

Henry’s author – the buried man

on Arthur Ave.,

#33 (just below

that rise) – black Denmark sun

                   *

son of Dragon Pen.  & round

the table in my heart

Little Bear will shout

for joy – recomposing the sound

of Mendelssohn, his neighborhood

(old Arthur St., where

we’d begun).  Circular

the agate labyrinth, dark with the blood

of Jonah Fisher-King.  The gray

bird croons in the tamarack.

The rigid Minotaur is back –

orange Leviathan in search of prey;

only a copper penny in a well

might draw the milky-grey

dolphin to leap this way,

& breach his livid traitor’s spell.

Only a moon-shot Camelot;

only a breathing dream.

Green island scheme

lifted from pyramidal plot

to float – an almond eye within

a double line, one lofty

figure for equality.

Sign of a Jonah resurrection

(life-saver up from hurricane). 

So pearls shine from a shell

beneath deep ocean-swell,

Earth circling Maypole again.

2.5.17

unfinished business

LIGHT CANOE

Cold Minneapolis.  White flakes

float solo, lazily

toward frozen sod.  He

sleepy too, Great Harry – shakes

his fusty bearskin (Mister Rabbi

tucked into his cave).

Wish they would behave.

A wayward dolor over fly-by

country ekes the bile from bunny-fur.

Infinitely gentle,

infinitely... mental

clamps inhibit memory, yessir.

Over the mantle in the dim apartment

Lafayette was dancing

just for Washington.  Sing

victory, Columbia – our true intent

was Liberty.  Hail to the Chief

in Indian Country –

arctic blue pine tree

sheds secret home (Sending Relief).

Grandpa’s got amnesia now.

The old brass shell from

Belgium mourns like a bell

in the pipe-smoky corner.  Plow

up the rose from the deep well of France,

Willa – that spiral dance

Crane zigzagged in a trance,

Atlantis echoing in weedy elegance.

                      *

Unfinished business crowds a heavy

surf onto the canvas.

Painter sticks to grass

with orange tar-baby.  Chevy

waves from Davy’s Locker – swings

his palm toward magnetic

north.  D.C. frantic –

Empire stuns fleet – Mort brings

us to us knees.  Only a wee

green island merman,

imperturbable, remain –

Pacific mule (Admiral of Ocean Sea).

A little grey jay (Whisky Jack)

whistles through her veil

of salt-shaking.  Sail

on, Peace Corps – Pearl’s Clamshack!

Under the turbid rotoring

of pyramid schemes –

when trumpery becomes

a weird mudfish – a rippling

stone floats to the surface, springs

to hover – catenary

honeycomb (or berry-

gem).  All minions, toughs & underlings

flee suddenly, like shady characters

out of a bad novel

(their plots unravel).

Blue J’s light canoe threads jasper piers.

12.7.16

stranger in the land

WELDED KEYS

The old words climb from the well of time

like a Norway spruce,

aquamarine – set loose

like fiery needles from the flame

of Psyche-Liberty (breaching

Columbia, rose-grey

dauphin).  Light spray

from Ocean’s breathing-hole – the sting

of Cuban salt.  Strange emissary,

stranger in the land,

your phantom clock-hand

gravitates toward Harper’s Ferry –

ticks back, between slate gray

clouds, the frozen sword

over its chessboard hoard

(gold poison-cup, primed to betray

the Union).  Carlsen’s hesitation

in hamlet-limping lines

of Sabbath silence... Martin’s

magnanimous memory... the unknown

veteran, shrouding a still-life

Lincoln penny (pinned

atop his heart).  Sound

heard in Ramah... Rachel’s life-

saver, bobbing Caribbean blues.

Queequeg on welded keys

surfacing velocities

Atlantis-radiant... bright jasper hues.

12.1.16

                          "Reminiscences of 1865", by John F. Peto (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

light along the river

ALMOND FAN

Morning light along the river,

where naked cottonwoods

lean toward the sun.  Ides

of November.  Hobo will shiver.

Still the grand yellow-green crown

of the willow sways in the wind.

The golden fans pinned

to the gray sidewalk (Egyptian

gingko sails) are royal palms

& roses strewn before

the laird of Jonah-lore –

coaxing his leathery alms-

mule into Jerusalem.

The weather is a kind

of global newsstand;

clouds mass like seraphim

to hear the briny sailor’s pipe

screel far & high at last

its elemental blast –

solo trompette marine, for ripe

world-winnowing crabapple-fall.

Thanksgiving’s on its way.

Manxman’s great Day

(Pink-Orange International

pi-squared to double you)

is hallowed with a lantern

glinting in the quern

of every hamlet’s plummet blue

                *

eye of ocean-grey curlew –

Atlantic ouragan,

Pacific clockhand

spinning from the deep toward you.

An octopus?  An octagon.

A Chinese lantern, great

icosahedron.  Agate

lamp of Psyche-Libération –

who lifts from indigo Rhode-harbor

morning threads, to Porta

Aurea – jasper Jenny

with a sprig from Davy Jonah’s arbor

(locket of bright copper hair).

The deep drone is no longer

doom.  Heart grows stronger

in the stars’ high midnight lair.

The child who moseyed to the shore

of Memphis Nile is borne

upon an Isis-horn

along the Milky Way, & more –

the red-white-blue American

turns black-orange-green

& back again (foreseen

by Queequeg on a slick oilcan)

& we will celebrate a Turkey Day

like peacocks in bald eagle’s

nest – Hagia Sophia’s

almond fan, one tout-monde roundelay.

11.16.16

something very like an H

SALIENT THREAD

In the limpid evening distance, the twin

piers of the bridge are shining

as if a smile took wing.

& something very like an H is drawn

in orange ‘gainst the azure gold –

a catenary grave

for slight Ophelia (wave

goodbye now, wrinkled Henry Gourd).

Hamlet & Laertes squabble

aching in the trench;

leaves fall... the wench

is dead.  The leaves make hibble-hobble

& the scene folds into quiet,

sea, mourning.  The ship

groans back to London.  Slip

the knot now, Everyman... knit

your soul into that oaken keel.

The ropes will fray, the mast

will break, redwood at last

keel over too... yet may this steel

needle still aim toward home, somehow.

A gibbous moon ripens

onto Jaybird’s pencil-

thin & salient thread (above, below

twine almond bears)   the crossroad sings

with joyeux Yeshua

the motes flame   Manitou

Black Elk   yahoo   the tree-bell rings

10.11.16

thy brother calls thee

CATENARY TED

The cosmos hangs from a thread, a

lifeline.  Yes, Flem

was with us, up at Verm –

helped Dad, me & Jim (brother)

dig the cabin foundation.  Flem’s

father was MN State

Epidemiologist;

Flem died of AIDS.  There are these themes,

signs... the padre of Hart Crane,

manufacturing Life-Savers...

Abraham with scimitar

squeakin’ by with a warning... O Cain,

thy brother calls thee from the ground.

Hobo sleeps by the river;

his thyrsus nods, a glimmer

of August grass.  Mullein, dock... diamond

pine-cone (piñata by the Po).  The tree,

the tall cedar of life,

Malcolm!  She’s your wife,

you know.  Nehushtana of Liberty.

Evergreen, year-round.  The shadow

owl knows (lives there) –

Spinoza cave-winds tear

up the forgery of terror (low

blow put into Vladimir Kiev-doom).

I’m singin’ with the stars,

Flem, Jim – after the wars.

Mr. Catenary Ted bojangles home.

8.31.16

just east of Providence

LAST WORD

Scavenging Raven found a crust

of broken mirror for

his nest above the river,

in a craggy oak (Blackstone, dust-

laden, winding her copper yarn

just east of Providence).

Po (or Eridanus)

glinted in that shard; a purple crayon

traced a spiral crane-dance there,

pinned to a dove-grey water-

wheel (by hand).  The daughter

of Caesar trolled a welded cluster

of rust-rose keys just below the surface –

keys to the worm-riddled door

of haunted Sant’ Apollinaire

in Classe (where Pharos ghost-sails

teem for Stilicho, Galla Placidia).

At his perch, Cautantowwit

reads smokefires lit

from Paris – On 29th of May

Corn Maiden will pirouette

one Final Show (a Waltz

to End All Wars).  Salt

is good, croaks the haunted vet –

share salt amongst yourselves, &

be at peace.  The night bird

oars southwest – his last word

whistled into silence (prairie-land).

8.23.16

Note : on Aug. 23, 408, the great Byzantine general Stilicho was executed in Ravenna.

ineffable mosaic sky

CLOUD-FEATHERS

The air so brilliant & clear today

beside the Bronze Age river.

The railroad bridge hovers

over its reflection – a light play

of diagonals, like water-spiders

on a pond, or cloud-feathers

above the Jordan, tethered

to a steadfast figure (Jasper’s

orant mariner, circumferencing

gray sea with shady palm).

That chanting shepherd, calm

beneath an indigo wheel of blazing

stars... one cheerful face beaming

from the medallion

in Classe (Apollinarian)

under darkened wooden ceiling

of abandoned ship, beached in pine-

swamp, at Ravenna’s edge.

Mere icons of a human pledge

so simple, local, omni-Byzantine –

ineffable mosaic sky

where Love bends waves

to lift us from our graves

into a metamorphosis   kind Aye

above halo of tears   you streak

with serpentine arches

agios   agios   agios

one river-rainbow   in an eagle’s beak

7.29.16

from the rubble-edge

SOFT CATHEDRAL

She came from the rubble-edge of tracks,

my little Jessie, O –

her father gambled so,

her mother sunk low, like a parallax

of sallow sun.  Harsh raptor features,

scavenged palimpsest,

thin gewgaws in a needle-nest –

indifferent lights, long-distant stars...

– as if the morning held no lamp

for choppy grizzlies, salt-

&-pepper crowns.  O Walt,

where be thy warm palm now?  Thy camp

amid tin canvases o’ cheery braves?

Jonah & Jessie, splintered

by the sea, had wintered

in the bottomland, like jasper leaves;

no voice of kind encouragement,

no ring-dove warbling

could break the iron thing

that iced the whole whale-monument.

Only one bright prong near St. Louis

promised their release –

an upturned kayak, Miss

Virginia (airy gate to happiness).

Slant waves of sorrow wash across

the little pine deck, Jessie

sang, but comfort thee –

my soft cathedral floats on moss.

6.2.16