like a phantom of spring

LAMBENT PRESENCE

Slouched on the couch, Hobo is

near the shortest day.

Earth’s winter way,

making her rounds – stoic old Miz.

The river like a froze French drain

her Via Francigena makes

past dirt-bent snakes

of old St. Lou.  Where Jackson

Quick, somehow, came from – pilot

on Yankee hospital ship, 1863 –

late father of Jessie

O. (caught fever, like as not).

Full fathom five, Jessie, thy father.

Like Jenny’s mother, too,

huh?  Little tree (cedar

or yew).  See my ghost dance gather.

The natural round is in the clay

& waiting for that Last Day

each grieving soul will say

O help me turn another way.

This lambent presence in the window

like a phantom of spring.

Persephone, in a ring-

dance, leapt over the fire, so –

lifted by droning hum of living

& dead, out of clay

wheel, through the Gateway –

wave-crest prow, loafer’s Thanksgiving.

12.17.19

Apollinaire lived in Paris, I live in Minneapolis (MN)

SNOW WHEEL

A little snow meanders down in Minneapolis

to cold November earth.

Guillaume, prince triste of mirth

was lowered from his balcony in Paris

two days before the Armistice.

Grandpa packed up his guns

one last time, near Verdun.

Spent rulers carpentered their peace.

Sacre du Printemps set the stage.

Russkaia Neva-sacrifice

summons her apotheosis –

leaps for the holocaust of banal rage

mounting to self-consuming poshlost peak.

Apollinaire was there

that night (under the sulfur-

flare, the guttering of Belle Epoque).

Grandpa field-marshaled the parades

on Armistice Day.  Lafayette,

we are here... the old print

over the dinner table (Revolutionary shades

trippin’ la gigue française, at Mt. Vernon).

My ghosts are here now,

in November snow.

The Rio fleuves inexorably on

down to St. Louee, New Orleans.

Jeanne spins with Jessie

to their Stagger Lee...

my snow wheel hums, Rose (oriens).

11.10.19

season of myths

AUDACIOUS FRIGATE

Yearnful melancholy Hobo ambles

through the cool autumn air

beside his ancient river.

The stately ship is in shambles –

audacious frigate, Ironsides;

the man of lawlessness

fills sails with loopholes,

fraud & force cloaked in bromides.

The mellow colors by the Mississippi

figure a buoyant hearth

where a woman might give birth

amid flame-tongues of domesticity –

like these nests of bold maple leaves

mingled with cadaverous hearts

of cottonwoods (Hart’s

premonition, Berryman’s Osiris sheaves).

& Henry, patiently delving like a wasp

through its oak-apple shell

or a worm through the skull

of a defunct Lear, will suddenly gasp

like an infant breathing her first air –

where oak-leaves chitter

beneath Roundhead October;

a restoration from crypt-keeper’s lair.

Hobo, following the copper shoreline

bends toward St. Louis

& his bark of Jessie, O.

Light churnagogue (twin trees becoming one).

10.16.19

sounds vaguely French

MOSS-GREEN

Benjamin Latrobe – sounds vaguely French?

A British architect

tapped to repair, perfect

the Capitol (amid the stench

of swamp & burning).  Dogged by debt

& selective smear campaigns

sets off for New Orleans

to finish big water-works his late

son Henry had so blithely begun

(cut down by yellow fever

in September).  Ever-

green cypress can withstand the rain.

New Orleans doorways lead you back

in time (Edgar Degas

plein air sketches...

moss-green veneer, live-oak

with levee-wash).  Mississippi

spills relentlessly

into the blue & salty

Gulf.  Her sea-monstro be you & me,

O Jessie O.  L’architecture

de l’Amerique c’est plain

& simple, utilitarian –

only... we’d like to see that azure

Paradis, un jour.  Le bateau ivre

des pirates-frères, Lafitte...

en bas le bayou, sweet

Benjy.  Lisez ton ombreux livre.

6.24.19

dialect of high & low

CLAY NAVEL

Literature might be political.

The dialect of high & low,

the pyramidical Pharaoh

& Erich Auerbach in Istanbul...

slaves muttering (familial)

athwart the exaltations

of regal Lion-Suns

& River-Moons (extra-terrestrial)

their jocular contra-dance lingo.

Dantean, obsolete

vernacular (obsidian);

mosaic featherweight, grave Galileo.

Everything formed from nothing... out

of a pinhole in the universe.

Clay navel – Osiris hearse

called up by current, cattail flute.

Whorls of tree-rings mantle each mortal eye.

Isis in Iowa,

Blackstone of raven-sigh –

Cautantowwit, under the Milky Way.

The tacit origin.  Your motherland,

O King.  Incipient

restoration, air apparent...

transparent equilibrium (beatitude).

Near the steel vault of St. Louis.

In the seine of the fishermen,

over the Mississippi.  Sign

from tree-logs, Jessie Ophelia... always.

6.23.19

like Red Wing clay

Mary Ravlin Gould

SKIP-JUMPS

My mother moves toward silence now.

Short wobbly steps

like printemps stumps

of Red Wing clay remainders.  So

I follow along now, too.  Two lumps,

like those she spun once

on a wheel.  Immense

maypole of Mendelssohn skip-jumps –

the way Rembrandt became his painting

(like seaweed-coated plank

of slick driftwood, anch-

ored in sand).  Memory, fainting.

I used to topple to the ground

in school.  An epileptic

pine, almost.  A cryptic

minor character, utterly unfound –

unbound within some fictional expanse

of 19th-century steppe

sunburnt peace-pipe

smoky distances (autumnal trance).

We thread the needle in a mummer’s play.

Ariadne draws the skein –

Dante’s oriflamme ancien

Parisian labyrinth for Beatrice

Jessie Ophelia, remembering her father

Jackson Quick, the river-

pilot, sounding Mount Ever-

Rest (full fathom 5/29... 29...) – Mt. Purgatoire.

5.28.19

Idea of Order at Port-au-Prince

PIED-DU-ROI

The mysteries of the tree of life

wafted in pine-scent,

loon-call.  Where she went?

My tiny Haitian house (Hiram Abiff?)

flattened into iron, painted

sea-coral (for joy).

That illegible toy

Advent ball of light – Levite,

anointed by black sun (yellow-

black Torah).  Sister-

dove?  Little tree

of Jessie, O (hidden willow-

canoe of Providence).  Chip

off the sloop Francesca

(pale arte povera,

woven from raven-ink on quipu

stone).  These are the quadrants

of my quatrain train

with a hey, ho, the wind

& the rain (Earth birth-bangs, pants).

You will carry Ariadne’s Crown,

Cordelia – innocence

to crystalline prescience

at perihelion of night (black noon).

Palladium of cornbelt Maggy –

out of Byzantium

into some quonset dome

of little Rhody (heart’s domain).

12.30.18

hen hides under blanket

LITTLE RINGS

In the muted Bruegel colors now

a raven’s-eye view circles

round twin Mirror Lakes

in Mendelssohn, so long ago.

Heidi & Holly, Jamie Freeman –

kids in a panorama

skate across my retina

from a Flemish Ice Age (Union

Pearl, foundered in frozen cup).

Laertes, will you drink

with me?  I think

not, yet... & so I take it up.

How gravity spins round the Sampo,

Longfellow – how Minnehaha

eddies through Edina

like a maelstrom over Nanabozo

– silly wabbit in the old cartoon

of Manitou & Redman –

stormcloud, lightning (Hen

hides under blanket, ‘til monsoon-

tornado trundles off to Canada).

Rabbi, Rabbi... Raven-

priest, Melchizedek... when,

O Wind, will this wallowing miasma,

lethal raincloud, lift?  A voice

from hurricane murmured –

when the agate here immured

in North Sea tears, as in a vice

                    *

floats into primeval Paradise

upon a simple kayak-word

out of the lunar hoard

of acorn-candelabra : REJOICE.

The train rumbles over the bridge

in the iron night, in the rain.

I won’t be back again

until Ferrara meets the Iron Range

in a poem coming down from winking

Starry Night.  Those whorls

are fingerprints – pearls

whispered out of Ocean, drinking

planets, orbits, icons, emblems

drawn from infinite thirst

for a milky source (first

taste of infamous black diadems).

Bears navigate a starry circle

over Berryman.  The stone

crypt glows in the bone-

castle.  Jessie Ophelia will

step down from the riverboat

beaming for Minneapolis.

The sky is gray, is

Minneapolis, St. Paul... c’est tout.

In Mendelssohn the Mirror Lakes

are ripples ever-new.

You’ll understand... you

live there (little rings an iron makes).

11.26.16

another blast from the Oak of Phenoque

CROWBAR TORCH

The poem might be a superconductor,

its topology so homespun,

threadbare, cold & thin –

a 1-dimensional egg-beater

jamming a needle’s eye in Denmark,

or Verona.  The capstan

spools the whole yawning

span – the wheel is made of holm oak,

evergreen & ancient, holy.

Argo is her name;

a million eyes flame

round her oaken rim, & Ariadne

anchors her from Ocean floor –

her catenary line

loops gracefully, from spine

of cedar mast to dark-green shore.

The old exotic matter of Bretagne

sleeps in her sybil’s leaves;

the lovelorn wind that grieves

through Dante’s cedars in Ravenna

carry G’ma’s freighter Gospel, too –

from Cape Ann out to Frisco

through the Gulf of Mexico.

Jessie, Ophelia... tarragon, rue...

her sleepy spells rise from the clay

& spin toward constellations

full of Okie calibrations –

a rain of acorns hits the hay

                   *

where long-abandoned train stations

sink back into the prairie

& a grey turtle (airy,

airiest) flew fluting through the nation’s

backwaters.  The love that moves

the Son & the moth-stars

goes raying through a potter’s

helm, the way an LP grooves

(Columbia).  Her ire will not last

forever – no, Iona

&/or Iowa have shown a

willingness to rise from lead ballast;

Do-Well, Do-Better & Do-Best

have joined hands in a wing –

a simple pleasant wedding,

thistle-burred (give red & blue a rest).

A century ago, the Meuse-Argonne

became a charnel house.

Grandpa Edward S.

was there, & shipped home (lucky one)...

– are Guillem’s muses all gone now?

An airplane lifts from Eiffel

to New York – the spell

takes hold – Liberty lifts her crow-

bar torch – ignites like acorn

from galactic hearth...

summons magnetic North...

O steadfast keel, O evergreen horn!

10.5.16

through clouds like whales

SOUL SCOUT

                              i.m. Fr. Jacques Hamel

You breathe a mist over stained glass,

like a cloud over Mirror Lake,

by the trolley road to Blake

(in Mendelssohn).  Rouen, alas.

In Chartres nave, one dark gray

thread still navigates

J-whorl, on golden agate –

Ariadne’s Way (sealed crypt to Day).

Her catenary smile will make

a lazy loop through Space

in Time; her carapace

a turtleshell – sweet curve you take

through clouds like whales, Jonah –

to find an old mercy-go-

round anew.  Like Jessie O.

on racy waterwheeler, sunray-

rain-bowed – Lady Liberty

an echo of Cahokia,

a salience of Royal Oak

(lips’ kayak lifting word to be).

Deep breath, Path P, Rhodos.

Out of a barbed-wire

cat’s-cradle (rust pyre

of Minotaur-empire) you rose –

winded with old George, the breadwinner,

& Maggie, of the veritas

caput – where Brandywine flows

into 4 Pine River (soul scout’s honor).

7.26.16

where friars met the chiefs

BRIGHT EIDOLON

Like a round dime tossed in a round

lake, hermetic lady

(Mendelssohn, or Galilee)...

the circle of clans closes on a mound

of blue-white clay.  With a star

beneath pulsing waves,

to summon all the braves.

Rêve-dream, song-songe (de la mer).

Smoke rises from Pipestone, where

friars met the chiefs –

an old Amerique (Lief’s...

Hennepin’s, Marquette... le voyageur);

Rose de St. Louis, Annie

de Texas... Jessie O.

from N’Orleans – down below

rim-sleep (full fado, Ariel).

The fumes are gray & sinuous

veins within rose

windowpane (chartreuse?) –

where a rustic yokel stems the breeze

like mast in steady gale.  He’s

smiling (thick mute mule,

dumb lamb).  You’ll

toss him in a hole – he slappim knee.

The frost hurls stern memorials

across blank mirror-ice

(in Mendelssohn).  Yet twice

& twice, bright eidelon... (loon calls).

6.13.16

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

the Ariadne pattern

INGLE EYE

A wild white rose at the side of the house

bloomed just today

like the city of Dioce

on green clover stairway   Spouse

Sister   in clusters of stars

Who are you?   Magdala

Stone   mosaic   of gala

winefest   little swirl of squares

corn-maze   around an ingle eye

your single sigh

the keystone   by-&-by

(little fiddlehead fern   turning pern-

kernel   the axle of the ax)

as Icarus   burning wax

falls   cataracts

into Grotto J   (relax)

on Chartres nave-pavement   discern

the Ariadne pattern

that angry monks   learn

magnanimity   & turn

again   as falcons gyre   into

the sun   (mild   smile

on earth   mile upon mile)

the Son of Man   is fashioned true

whisper those lips   of windblown rue

Jessie Ophelia   your

leaves of grace   empowered

to plow   deep rose   to emerald blue

5.31.16

the flute zigzags

Thus we bring to a close Book 6 of the great mumble-pilgrimage, in form of Cricket-Chirp Epic, which we call Ravenna Diagram.  Six books = about 340 poems already.  I do believe the sheer steadiness of this eccentric errand is beginning to garner a little more public notice.  Some batches have appeared here and there in Blackbox Manifold, in the U.K., the Journal of Poetics Research, in Australia, the Battersea Review, in the U.S., and also in Sweden, in a memorial anthology for world poet Regina Derieva.  One poem is forthcoming someday in the venerable & magnificent Poetry magazine, and the estimable Puncher & Wattman publishers, in Australia, have made a preliminary commitment to bring it forth in book form eventually.  For all this support, I am so grateful to the editors involved.  And special affection-rays beam out to those steadfast readers scattered about Rhode Island & elsewhere in the cosmic blogosphere... thank you, dear pals!

*Postscript, 5.28.16 : surprised to learn that this poem was written on the 79th anniversary of the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge (May 26, 1937).  The poem celebrates the Golden Gate in the final stanza.  The bridge is a recurrent whatnot throughout Ravenna Diagram.

WHISPER-DOOR

Walk back   through a rainy-day memoir

through the watercolor (Grace

Ravlin   Gloucester, Mass.)

over a fireplace   wherever you are

down the River Road   by the cottonwoods

through the rose garden   with

a quipu-thread   into depths

of summer   Willy’s hobo moods

when the eyes relax   deep into green

& a river flows   to the heart-

matrix (almond, athwart

twin orange trees)   your ascent   unseen

Father Hennepin   or St. Louis

by the Stone Arch Bridge

on   New World ridge

where Evening Star   harps Liberty

These harmonic  concordances

Apollinaire   à New Orleans

Ariadne’s  contra-dance

in sleepy Paree   sybilline séance

The flute zigzags   l’après-midi

sad Adams (Henry) perks

his ear   the password works

once more (Encore, encore!)   you see

twin gates rise   virginal   ange d’or

with safety net   one golden

thread   trompette marine

from Jessie O. to J.   soft whisper-door

5.27.16

On a ceiling in Verona

SPIDER-THREAD

Late winter gloom.  I’m stepping down

an ice-path to the river

like an Incan on his sliver

of Andean terrace (steep, frozen).

Downstream, the dark-eyed Jessie O.

(steamboat captain’s daughter,

great-grandmother)

was just a child, coming up from below

St. Louis... O Jessie Ophelia...

Cleopatra Desdemona...

Solominka, Marina...

frescoed on a ceiling in Verona-

by-Neva, maybe (in a dream).

& I, only mere boy,

half-yearn... imaginary

Longfellow, flaking off the stream...

Your dark water-crossroads, Pawnee-

Hecate.  Whirlpool

of Eurydice.  School

of Dante’s cinder-journey.  Three

ways, all phosphoric (thundering

falls).  Only to find

that light Diana-mind

Justinian burrowed, for his high welding –

only the lightest spider-thread

from Colchis dawn will do.

For Juliet.  You too,

my child, may skip the tightrope-tread.

2.19.16