where the spring is found

ROBIN HUM

This plaintive spring, like a lonesome robin

piping his distance at the riverbank.

Out of The Tender Land, I think.

The vast bronze river is one serpentine

vibration.  A continental vernal sign,

stretching with catenary smiles

from Lake Itasca to the marshy isles

off New Orleans.  & Hobo sez – all mine.

Dotted with gravity of local bridges,

1132 miles (up & down).

Their almond arcs a pontoon

cascade… cavernous vector of ledges…

climbing toward a flimsiest first whorl

of fiddlehead crowns

at the source of sounds –

where the spring is found.  All shall be well

& all manner of thing shall be well

when the blazing rose shall dwell

at the matrix of clay wheel,

& Thunderbird boom his bronze bell.

& the cry of the mighty bird & the sigh

of the river sound one octave :

unison, played in the key of Love.

For though I sing like angels & men… & though I

have all knowledge – all prophetic wisdom

of stars & planets, capitals

& kings – yet I have not caritas…

I am but sounding brass.  Hear Robin hum.

3.19.20

print on linen by Grace Tagliabue & Phoebe Gould

all manner of thing

LIGHT RAYS

Old Hobo drowses near the summit

of summer.  He sits

in the midst of his nitwit

desires, like Hobo King; he would not

harm a bug, much less a refugee

– plodding to the ports

with worn-out bags, hurt

babies on their backs... ay me!

Corruption is an empty shell

sans floor beneath.

Dons with shark teeth

bowl cannon balls in hell.

He muses on St. Thomas More

& Maximus, a little more;

Susanna’s chaste amour,

the hanging gardens of the Moor.

Lambs in their locality

taste the long grass

while summers pass,

yielding too much reality;

Hobo sleepwalks with the rest,

absorbed in his dream-

sponge.  Every seam

fans rain from peacock-fest –

an early-bird worm-hunters’ realm

inscaped with infinite

abundant life... articulate

splendor from the milky helm

               *

of Wisdom’s gratified delight.

No beast can overwhelm,

no tyrant flim-flam

microcosmic Man’s birth-right,

intones mild Maximus from his

ascetic prison-cell;

all shall be well,

all manner of thing – from fire-fizz

to salmon-grill, from trumpet-vine

to orange safety-net,

all shall be swell.  Get

you, my child, to the heart of Man –

it is no absence in Creation,

but flutter of a smile;

a wing-beat with no guile,

eyes’ icon of ineffable Person.

Draw near.  Hobo is dreaming now.

Rio del Espiritu...

a river-mystery.

Gazes at figurehead upon a prow.

One climbing from the grave.  Jonah?

Eurydice?  Mary

sleeps in the cemetery –

dreams within a dream.  Selah.

Calm-spinning, like a gyroscope,

the Hobo-King advances

toward the tomb of Lazarus.

Her mandorla... light rays the slope.

7.6.17