least coin of Union provenance

WING-BEAT

The American poem makes do with what’s

right there.  Like a penny in a well

or Peto trompe l’oeuil.

Reminiscences of 1865… hook for hats

on an absinthe wall.  Unlike electricate

sweet Alighieri, burbling Italian

honey-rhyme into his Pythian

pylon – a vertical refulgent ziggurat,

as opposed to our stretched-horizontal

(catenary) system of safety

nets (dangling from Frisco Bay

to DC).  Quipu knots of Neanderthal

design – z-twist, s-twist in a 3-ply

twine, spun with dry grass

or pine bark from Abri du Maras

anchoring light matrices of solidarity.

Ah, nested Rose of Dante’s alta fantasia!

Here lies a homely Providence

cresting seven hills, dense

with ignoble Henry’s disjecta membra.

Plain facts of what happened, what was

made manifest in clay.  Bearing

pinned-up mementos (sprung

Ford’s Theatre tickets… Jimi Hendrix

poster?) – cornered in a coign

of copper maize, a corn

maze.  Dropped in a forlorn

well off North Main St. – least coin

                    *

of Union provenance – silver Penny’s

golden meaning (Love

welded to treasure-trove…

chaste equilibrium of all equalities).

The gift that unfolds at the heart of things –

Francesca’s golden poncho (Peruvian)

spun at Sheep’s Clothing (on Wickenden)

for Dave the California bard (who springs

from Rhody roots himself).  Gift

that is already there in the earth,

shining quietly… an Ocean mirth

salted with grief & everlasting life.

In the heart of remorse & gratitude

rose memories well…

the flaming throne planted in Hell

transmuted to Paris park-bench habitude.

I know whom to thank for this Rose Jubilee.

Stony Magdalen, in Galilee

rolled away, set free

the Rabbi of a rescued Julie-bee.  Recovery!

He was already gone, but she showed us

the way.  & the catenary

curve of Argo’s aerie

twinkles with lights, up there – a million eyes

suddenly flash joy from blue-black sky

pouring Milky Way & Ocean Stream.

La vida es sueño – life is a dream;

the wing-beat of Thunderbird only a sigh.

 4.14.20

sketch by Michael N. Gould

so in such straits

GOLD FLEECE

In the blank depths, at nadir of winter.

An acid stain of turpentine.

Peto’s absinthe green

in the still life; drumbeats in the mirror.

Lincoln & Kennedy… Kennedy & King.

Black silk around the photographs.

Time, summarized in epitaphs –

a rocket glare that freezes everything.

& traitors cluster in a mortis-ring

about great Yggdrasil,

composing lizard doggerel

with fangs of trumpery & sting

of fraud.  Shaping a lattice for a type

of self-enclosing anti-Christ,

whose mesmerism none resist –

Rumored Injustice To Be Smashed By Hype.

So in such straits we huddle round the mast.

No longer measure progress

by the steam pipe’s hiss

& whistle of alarms.  It’s in the past,

a memory of island buoyancy

elliptical & calm

we’ll find that palm;

amid light’s brilliance, a transparency

as if an eye looked down from azure dome

as acorn witness for an apple kingdom –

as if the citizens of heaven-home

were you & I… gold fleece of human freedom.

2.12.20

Thunderbird already there

LIVID GRAIL

Late October evening.  Minnesota.

The sky already blue-black,

midnight blue.  Dim speck

of starshine, here & there.  The Hiawatha

sped from Chicago north, May 29

(1935).  Heavy freight train

hobbling across the iron

span, now – screeching, chirping (mine).

Peto, Reminiscences of 1865.

Those mystic chords of memory...

someone to end the enmity

with eloquence (while he was still alive,

and after).  Summon our humanity

into the web of mutuality –

where rootless irrationality

might lose its sway (so hope we).

These chords align their intervals,

octagonal resemblances.

Out of a salty sibilance,

an ocean-sigh (when sea-bell tolls) –

one heave of molten planetary heart

whose Jonah waits, to rise again

out of the chambers of Leviathan

coiling a spring where all the rivers start.

The prehistoric limestone streams

ply on ply, like Schifanoia

allegories in Ferrara –

irenic fossilized life-forms

                 *

of some St. Vitus dance, before all wars;

here a spiral clover-shell

& here an almond eye

gazing from hell up to those stars

with a perennial fidelity.

Maybe it was your canoe,

Micòl – breaching anew

through stinging surf of grief & joy;

for that amor who is always in advance,

arriving before you know

like an eye-in-hand, so –

molded like your clay flute-radiance,

the little bird who sings out of the kiln.

Coulombe, coulombe,

she coos her name –

so simple, waiting at the windowsill;

out of the fire & burning palms

like Phoenix from her tomb

a new America (coulombe,

coulombe) this livid grail exhumes –

ghost dance of the dove who came before

of Thunderbird-already-there

through the black night air

from the dancing bear – shady amor

framing with shimmering wave-wings

milky Melchizedek

& bright ginger Jack

& gentle Abraham (grail-splicing springs).

10.29.19

May Goulding at her Negus launch

UNFOLDING SHEEP

So the double wheels of the Venn diagram

(a kind of astigmatism from

from Ravenna to home)

mesh in a translated spacetime –

East to West become Rome-Byzantium

Greek to Italian Catholic

Orthodox – majestic

Chartres to homespun NOLA Notre Dame.

I’m working on a bridge, sez Hobo.

Under that nature morte

(Peto, Brown Decades) – what

the flower of liberty became... oh no.

The lilies on the funeral train

(Gould was an engineer).

Abe Lincoln’s here –

great Julius Caesar’s ghastly coin

(one lethal copper penny).

The wheel slowly revolves.

Agony gradually resolves.

The quiet sepulcher (Gesthemane)

became a bargaining chip at the Crusades.

What molts the World-Ruler

from Ides of March to your

sweat-April soul-showers (the blade’s

Excalibur) is some indomitable eagle-

heart – bald as the snowfields

north of International Falls,

wide as the river south of Angola.

                    *

You mark the justice of the refugee,

the accurate perception

of the slave.  Moses-pontoon

or old Italian canoe... it’s simply

the humble carpenter’s sharp eye

encapsulated in a bead

of honey (life’s high meed) –

gold oval of air, its quiddity.

Like throne of Isis in West Branch,

or Grant Wood making space

for Herbie Hoover’s birthplace –

like May Goulding at her Negus launch

(a cup of ceremony from deep

Ethiopia) for Henry Flower –

blooming nom-de-plume, your

lambent, flammable, unfolding sheep.

Rhode Island waits for you,

Son of the Evening Star;

little acorn-czar,

your birthday rhymes with Manitou –

palladium of shimmering mosaic

merging with river-clay

to meet Oak-Apple Day

for restoration (JFK).  A wake, awake!

It’s Rooster Henry, dusting off

the grave.  It’s everyone

thinking the train’s long gone –

finding an acorn in a hollow trough.

3.3.19

one copper penny

MAGENTA DUSK

Airless stasis of the Brown Decades.

Peto’s trompe l’oeuil.

Abe’s wound is mortal.

Funeral train; black silk parades.

One copper penny glimmers in a well,

grown moss-green.  Imago

for suffering servant... halo

of ineffable good will.  Don’t break the spell.

Was it for nought this Man of Sorrows

took upon his shoulders

our hellfire – that smolders

while his penny ransoms all tomorrows?

Even Old Abe was an infant once.

Loafing on a ship

of milk & honey, lip

curving over smiling waves... a trance

of Promised Land, a river’s dream.

So Henry’s, Hobo’s path

folds under wrath –

collapses bridges into earthquake seam.

Reminiscences of 1865.

An absinthe memory

of rancid statuary

cluttering the dead wasps’ hive.

Disconsolate, they ramble riverbanks –

until the last light breaks

the sky into rose lakes,

magenta dusk.  Let us give thanks.

2.12.19

Reminiscences of 1865

GREY FEATHER

Today we recall the tall gaunt pioneer

with Peruvian cheekbones.

His fifth scene atones

for all that blood shed in anger

at the righting of wrongs; his brief turn

by the Gettysburg graveyard

consumes, with a perfect word,

our kindled rage in bright compassion.

The creaking panorama of all wars

since Cain killed Abel, here

slows, crawls... Ford Theatre –

whose British farce on Yankee manners

stumbles from play to traitor’s hour.

Dusky similitudes...

old King of the Woods

hung from an oak (in Raven’s power)...

the tragic pattern rotates on a string.

Tyro, dangling puppets

tangled on parapets,

shuffles the script – the play’s the thing.

Your clear-eyed servant laughs his last,

cries, Come to my Thanksgiving

feast!  An overlay of evening

wash soaks its river of papyrus bast

in crimson, indigo, & brown.

Still life.  Peto.

Reminiscences on Yew.

Grey feather you must make your own.

4.14.18

compact Mayflower

ACCORD-HARMONIUM

Memorial Day.  The little flags

for birthday boys.  A vast

lime hillside park, just

north of Harriet.  My scraps & rags

of memory.  Twilight apartment

in the 50‘s (60 years

ago).  Mahogany.  Grandpa’s

brass shell from France.  The scent

of pipe tobacco.  Suntanned print

of Washington & Lafayette

skipping a minuet

après la Revolution... ancient

icons of a Constitution, hereby

animated (in the flesh).

How to start fresh?

For the remembrance of me...

for 1st Minnesota, Cemetery

Ridge (clumped there

after the last full measure).

Play with your toy soldiers, Henry.

Hawk-wrought republican scriptures

underwritten by compact

Mayflower... covenant

of friendly fellowship (yours,

mine, ours).  Underscored in turn

for soft flute melody

out of forgotten Gypsy

music-box, deep August forest (yearn

                *

for startled stars, green, coppery).

The absinthe reminiscence

of a Peto (Still Decades).

Time’s overrated.  It’s your history

that’s in your making, Liberty.

Out of Itasca spring

a major serpent thing

treads sinuous Welsh-knotty

tanglements, under lightweight bridge

(it’s only gravity) –

your shadow-play, Psyche,

Eurydice.  Reunion.  To the edge

of black-&-yellow double-eagle

eggshell canoe (viceroy

cocoon?) from stony

Petrograd (oscillate, seagull).

Black-orange monarch of your soul.

This little mustard seed

of pilgrimage (Venerable Bead

or Columbaa) will ravel up the whole

into an Okie safety catch of swinging

carousels – Francesca

slanting out of Rimini

(doggèd by Pound) is bringing

Beatrice in her wake – a hurricane

accord-harmonium,

an oriole some-hum bonum

renewing memories (Van Windowpane).

5.26.17

in the still life

OKIE CHAIR

In the still life, when the sun goes dark

the absinthe green on the old

wooden door (color of mold

or holm-oak acorn).  In the park

by the lake, the sparse grass wakens

to an April sun;

& you remember someone

battling the ice (forsaken

minstrel-king, nazir).  A buried man.

Some twiggy unknown soldier –

stranded black-gold heir

thread-spun beneath Stalin hardpan.

The butterfly’s a Morpho blue.

Blue as Siberia

in winter, da (selah).

Listen : Quartet 15.  For you,

Nadezhda.  You, Natasha.  Through

& through.  A nature morte

très fort et dur.  Part

rags, part soft shoe, Corporal Goo;

part forever, like Francesco

dropping all his duds.

Back to his father (odds

even he’ll marry her, you know).

There was a war in heaven, in

your heart, your mind.  Jesus

the Rabbi snowballed thus –

blackballed in Memphis – sharkfin

                  *

razor between Hell & Paradise.

They call it history –

a dime store mystery

(Elsie in profile, in an oval vise).

It’s only poetry.  Someone will pay

for it, eventually

(Harry Hawk, maybe –

Our American Cousin).  A splayed play-

stub (Miss Understanding

Under Study) stuck

on a crossbar (Buck

Stops Here).  Eagle Has Landing.

Davy in the Detail.  Film roles

for everyone – all which is

inheres... Macbeth, Cortez....

Universe is empty (full of holes).

Must be that woodpecker, prying

for a worm – the dry mast

puckering (will never last)

to kiss the lightning (scrying

from a crow’s nest now, Cautantowwit).

Whittling toward Arthur Street

in Mendelssohn (complete

symphony to be determined).  Sit

down, Henry, in your Okie chair –

the nave is full of light.

Acorn shines bright.

The Rite (à Paris) is a sweet nightmare.

4.14.17 

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

Abe's in the Gulf

TROMPE L’OEIL

Peto, Reminiscences.

Such silent stillness

in a wooden door.  This

repressed memory (forsakenness).

The mottled copper green, absinthe.

Like curdled Liberty.

Coins, ticket stubs... three

paths into the shredded labyrinth

of old glued paper notes.  Almost

erased, some calculations –

sums, additions...

within the mandorla (Abe’s

photo-ghost).  Abe’s playing golf

today, down at the Gulf –

in Florida, with grimacing

elf.  By the marred lake, full of pelf

& flattened tires... distended Brown

Decades of gaslight shadows,

drilled by torpedoes

into stunned prey (pressed down

under demented mansions).  Still

there is another window

clears this reified view

(black coral reef of sacrificial

scars).  The solidarity of living

stones is leaping light –

scaled from a dragon-fight

like trompe l’oeil Thanksgiving

                *

or hologram of humming bird

circling the whisper dome

of spiritual freedom.

Ghost Dance, suspended word

hung from the apex of the tent –

a veil of murmuring linen

around the target sun

of a salty human sacrament

of joy, shipmate!  Ahoy, Jonah!

Cresting the deep wave,

smiling palm-wave

circumference hailing hurrah

for the red white & blue!  Old Glory

spangled by Love!

Columbia, dove

of Liberty... Emancipation story!

So the battle lines are drawn

at last.  Maid Marion –

trampled onto a plane

with Jack & Jackie, by the Lion-

Tooth (orange-tan phony-booth) –

you loose one gray thread

from the bleeding head

of Apollinaire... qui chante... the truth

shall make you free.  The limestone

wrinkles beneath clear streams.

Sovereign of human dreams,

arise like Francis to your servant throne.

2.12.17

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)

Walk through the mirror

MINOR TEAR

Bleak winter shades... crows in the trees

beak-gnashing, rasping (caw-

caw, hawk-hawk).  Low

Earth, rotund silentium (dregs, lees).

Stillness of still-life – Brown Decades

(hoist Peto).  The Just Man

imago is just a man –

barely there, through simple glades

of green.  Mirror Lakes liked him,

in Mendelssohn.  Only

an infinitely gently-shivery

Rabbi, Hiawatha Honeybear – bro Jim,

our lunky logos (penny-loafing).

Who bears it all, past

He- or She-Cat’s paste-

up Geryon-masque (a scary nothing).

This maze contains a minor tear.

& through a crevice there

one Ariadne hair

leads you to almond-gold rain-bear.

Earth seethes with ziggurats of fraud

& blind men lash themselves

to violence (selva

oscura mitts gorilla code);

but it shall not be so with thee.

Bunny hikes one eye

& looks for wheeling Eli

to come by (benevolent memory).

3.3.16

Remembrances of 1865 (so beginneth Ravenna Diagram Bk 6)

SEA WASH

To turn your glance back, eastward, from

the height of a great orange

pier (Home on the Range

in your ear) – immense Pacific foaming

behind you... like a lookout in a crow’s-

nest – a single burning glass,

a golden eagle-eyepiece

taking in a continent.  Up to Rose

Island Lighthouse (Narragansett Bay) –

to the byzantine capitol dome

in Providence, whose gnomon

is a gold harpooner – looking away

back west, toward you.  Photoshot (still).

As when the sun stops briefly

over Jericho, before they

blow the trumpets, & the walls fall;

as if you stood before a Peto

still-life (intricate

& accurate memento

of complete stigmata-scrimshaw hero).

I hear another sea wash, sighing

round salt emerald shores.

Columba’s Iona (wars

far off, now) laved with dying kings’

repentance-prayers (touch of blessing

for the wounded flutes

of clay).  So lift your lute,

sad Frisco boy.  She’s leeward (glistening).

2.12.16

Still life with JFK

PAPER SAILBOAT

His profile in shining lunar silver

twinkles with Dublin glee

on the half-dollar (JFK,

insouciant).  Camelot forever.

I was born in ’52, believe

it or not, but only

52 years ago I

lost my innocence (heave

sigh).  I was 11 years old

when they shattered the crown

of the redhead king.  My own.

A double birthday, dubbed.  Fold

up the deck of your paper sailboat, son;

in Newport they will mourn

the people’s chosen one,

killed by the backlash of the gun.

A still life, now.  Brown Decades

(Peto).  Reminiscences

of Lincoln.  Whitman’s

chrysanthemum (cresting cascades

of lilacs).  Memphis underworld –

I gather the limbs of Osiris

(52-pickup, Rimini-Venice).

First king, dead king.  Neighborhood

gossip has it, Solomon,

he’s coming back.  He

never died.  Like Jonah

Houdini, he’ll eat fish in Hebron

yet again.

11.22.15

Palmyra, Palmyra

I heard part of a BBC broadcast on the ISIS rampage in Syria.  A British scholar was asserting that the neoclassical architecture of Washington, DC was modeled in part on the ruins of Palmyra.

That's not where this poem came from, exactly.

A poem is the idiom of an idiot, full of flounders & slurry, signifying (maybe) something.  Ezekiel saw dem wheel's a'glory, way in the middle of the air (Louis Armstrong).  Eugenio Montale waxed lyric about this particular LP.

"Nummulitic" : art historian Adrian Stokes talks about the particular kind of limestone used to build the pyramids - called "Nummulitic".  After the nummulites, small protozoic creatures trapped in Egyptian limestone - from "nummus", or coin, in Latin, because of their disc-like shape.

Somehow we got from Egyptian nummulites to American dollar bills (with the pyramid & the disc) - from money to Mammon - George Washington on the other side.

Long way from the Lincoln penny.

Poetry is a work-in-progress, like the Earth (according to divine Providence).  Ursus here is a sort of image of the State as Beast (USA, RUS, USSR).  But the bears might be redeemed.  "Without vision, the people perish."

WOODEN LOGS

August departure... evening crickets

elegize on wooden

logs.  In Peto’s brownian

study, a sad decade disintegrates

like Queen Zeno’s palm-fronds, in

Palmyra.  One wing-scratched hand

pleads Washington’s jarred band

of masons (keening for Syrian

widows, orphan sons).  Important

information inside.

Your gravy train can’t hide

from Grace, her chaste Nubian portent –

always arriving never quite,

a Paradise for turtle-

dives.  So melt the mortal

Quito coin, our double-down knight

(shy U-bird cycling her parking

lot).  Concentric wheels

of Nummulitic seals...

one bears dawn for Ursus (barking

Mammon flipping tails) – the other

gyrates toward his irate

Beatrice – oceanic

ex, Czech mate (cyclonic mother

coated in cute limestone slime).

One down, one to go

up again, Horatio.

Antique Atlantis corals rime.

8.31.15

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