& Miriam will dance

DRIED SAP

You can sense the salient resistance

of this old Norway pine

like a mast from Lebanon

in each crust of dried sap.  Straightness

of its upright stance.  Simplicity

of sea-green yearning

toward such bright-swelling

moon… half-dollar of Apollo mission (JFK

smile).  Our SUPERMOON, shedding a silver

reminiscence of sunshine

across crepuscular decline.

Rippling resistance.  What we were

reversing what we are (black sun

of trumped-up emperors

gnawing like rodent-raptors

at the heartwood of the law – treason).

The Song of Miriam, the hymn of exodus

out of the red waters

red white & blue tatters

your sister-dove murmured… passed over us.

My penny in the well, my dark reverberant

exile – the king of Israel

Melchizedek his trial

in Memphis, by the muddy Nile (our

hierophant).  Somehow the 4th of Set

rainbows a seventh 4th

& Juliet comes forth

& Miriam will dance (a Jubilee grande fête).

4.7.20

in Deserto Rosso

LITTLE ROOM

Like Giuliana’s little boy, in Deserto Rosso

for 6 weeks I was on a ventilator

(“iron lung” back then).  For

Guillain-Barré.  That was 1956 or so.

Paralysis for Henry Fish Quattoir -

great reckoning in little room.

Like coffin-casket, in full bloom;

like April, breathing frailty to power.

Who shall restore the sickly Lord?

There is no temple on the earth,

no glorious basilica that’s worth

the wonder of a single child (a word

once heard with flooding tears, in Ramah).

You who are sum of all

creation – telos, quintessence, lovely corona…

behold the Argos-eyed canoe of Noah.

How the universe giulianizes in you,

Giuliana (as Cusanus wrote)!

You are both verde crown & mote

of mustard seed… the whole tree, Julio!

Now Henry faints… his epileptic storm

of vertigo (at sight of blood)

flings him to Frisco neighborhood.

Where Juliet ascends… to join a swarm

of victims, falling like rain from Golden Gate

(our Twin Towers).  He stretches

out his arms… the King of Wretches,

Grail King.  Melek, MLK (Good Friday fate).

4.1.20

somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave

CAHOKIAN GIFT

The sun peeks through this February weather

as a frail reed or fluted candle

finds a chink in some Siberian

prison wall.  United States are altogether

in states of disarray today.  Tonight

the President’s speech will

be, no doubt, a veritable

trompe l’oueil – he will not make it right.

Henry too lingers in his fog

of disaffection.  Absent

from his Hobo-tent,

divided from his tiny tree-frog

peeper (cooing like a mourning dove

no larger than a copper penny –

greenish rust, gone silver Jonah

now, somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave).

He hears relentless Ocean River

bend the zodiacs toward clay,

Big Muddy bearing all away

into her coral Nephthys-quiver;

chambers of Coatlicue

like dead bee hives, storing

the crystallized outpouring

(zigzag red-black raven roundelay).

O motionless Greek urn, still turning,

Ezekiel-bones, still yearning!

Redeem Time’s churning

revolutions, Adonai – transfiguring

                        *

North Star!  You mantle humankind

like that Madonna della Misericordia

Piero della Francesca frescoed –

tricolor umbrella-shelter for the blind!

For Agape is a magnetic prong, threads

taconite to one Itasca

lady’s slipper (showy!) – &

drops rusty anchor of Rhode Island reds

into a lambent western window-rose

(mauve, scarlet, violet & blue)

where Hope beams into view –

& from her constant fortitude still glows!

So anchor Henry’s trembling canoe

deep in your heart-of-hearts’

matrix – where timespace floats –

in that classy garage Micòl showed you;

your forsaken Byzantine three-master

beached in parochial nowhere,

ferrying Alighieri into air.

Where the mosaic wave of our disaster

cradles in the love that heals despair

& shimmers there, like Juliet

walked back from fatal plummet

or Henry Bear, helped from his chair

of perilous dismay (to restoration

& recovery).  So lift

my hokey Cahokian gift

up to your Eye of Providence… Union.

2.4.20

bateaux of old Louisiana

SPEECHLESS GIFT

It was 50 years ago now, Julie.

We were with the sleepers

in a dream, the jumpers

on a fogbound bridge – our odyssey

a sleepwalk of necessity

from day to day.  America

was manifest, a replica

of heaven for the taking – see?

This land was made for you & me.

But you & I sank down

into Pacific depths, my clown,

so young, so sad, so gone.  Ahey

ey yo.  It’s in the bottomland

or on the ocean floor

you’ll find the coral door,

the seashell, Pearl – your eye-in-hand.

Like Joan of A. moored to a smoking pyre

or O. still singing in Leviathan-jaw

bateaux of old Louisiana

meet like rose petals in a western choir.

& the Word-made-light, that sank into the clay

sprang up again, as speechless gift

in the dome where every tongue will lift

& feed upon her painful vine (his dying-day).

Our ghost-dance, Julie – tiptoe in a dream.

JB whispers, Eurydice!

& circuiting the dome with me

hums from Rez graveyard in a Joan A-frame.

12.11.19

the otherness of the poem

RIVER-VEIN

The turning year brings its anniversaries.

Sunken ships in the harbor.

My fleeting image of an arbor

green on the slope at Golden Gate – Julie’s

last day (her father Jim’s birthday).

Today the sun glistens

as if through Temple linens;

pearl beyond price, merciful Gateway...

The otherness of the poem is merely

the cosine of a conversation,

Cuz.  Light trinity of sun-

moon-star, embedded in clay lips (dearly).

As America is balanced in the scales

by a feather from Byzantium,

so a Pipestone eagle-drum

summons a kingdom borne on wing-sails.

Covenantal arc of steel

at navel of the earth;

gangway to spoke-berth

coralized beyond our iron wheel.

& from a pearl-eye in the mandorla

light beams to every hamlet-

brig across the planet –

melting the blood-red wax of Danelaw

& Washington, pouring dark wine

into each muddy river-vein,

lofting all-human

fellowship again (curving J-spiral sign).

12.7.19

one mustard spark

RAINBOW MOUTH

The splendor of dangling catenary arcs

of orange steel & azure

sparkling with slim sure

stride, sprinting beyond the bayside parks.

I saw you, iridescent Golden Gate

on a sunny day in 1974.

Where Juliet had gone before,

plunged into her absence... my jeune Fate.

These tears in the inescapable network

of mutuality, these tears

of things.  What heart bears

at eye of hurricane (one mustard spark).

In the still, small world, along the keel

of a trim equilibrium skims

love’s unconditional hum

of humble surrender.  Like a simple meal.

Like a mother or father who is always there

ahead of time, before

you are aware.  Will soar

with eagles & doves, your Aviator-

Mediator – volant-violet Adonis, lifted up

(beyond the rivalry of red

& blue) into the thunderhead

of Thunderbird (Jonah grail-cup).

Hum now, Evening Star, Columbia...

your rainbow mouth, Osiris-

child.  Over the crisis-

cradle, full of infant cries – la realtà.

10.22.19

beehive hop melds drones

SCRAMBLED EGGS

October in my spindly cedar octagon.

Oblomov in a quaint gazebo

waiting for his Olga, O.

Henry had an MRI today.  Beat.  Ochin.

His mini-RI, his Ocean State,

full of scrambled eggs &

mussels, canonical sand...

some Narragansett raving (will abate).

He can’t lift Juliet (or JB, either)

out of the bitter surf

with a pompous word, a mere

sniff to the wise.  Just take a breather,

Hen.  The heart is a mystery

who can plummet?  Purple

majesty amid all people,

8-ball in the Rabbi Shabbat sea –

where be wisdom be to found, Henri?

In love again with Heidi

or whole neighborhood, ey?

In Mendelssohn, where the bee-

hive hop melds drones to symphony...

where children laugh naturally

& Sophie will skip-to-me-

Lou through the live-oak gateway

immemorial... as toward you, gentes,

Jeannie, Juliet, Jonah,

the heartbeat (Shekinah)

skims near – overshadowy Benny Voluntas.

10.9.19

photo from Ballets Russes

ALMOND ARGO

Old Hobo-&-Henry, down by Big Muddy.

Hobo lounges in cottonwood shade.

Twirls a bright curving blade

of tiger-lily, so orange & black, idly

between finger & thumb.  Henry

thought of mossy Giuliana

walking away from her pottery

shop, entering the gloom of Sant’Apollinari –

high frieze of majestic virgin martyrs

carrying their crowns.

The photo from Ballets Russes,

Paris, 1913 – spring maids, en fleurs...

& the black dot of Juliet in the distance

crossing the tensile spine 

of orange tiger-dragon

one last time (beneath frost-cobalt silence).

Strange oak, epileptic, near the shore.

Bent like a lyre before

a cluster of cottonwoods – your

humble servant, it seems.  Kingly no more.

Hobo eyed it.  Washing their leaves

with hers, maybe, he said.

Like San Francesco & his bride,

his sister, Povertà.  Humility cleaves

to the pivot of this world, the matrix –

to the crossroad, to the tree

of life.  I look into you, Henri –

to your salty heart.  I read the asterisk

                        *

you scribble for a star, approximately –

I scan the fresco-sketch

you offer for a spirit-potlatch

replica of New World Galilee.  It’s funny.

Earth is in its birth-pang death-throes,

Hobo.  Hope is hard to find.

Yet... the kingdom’s in your mind.

Your heart, my friend.  The Shadow knows.

& you were right to shape the Southern Cross

surrounded by Sydney fig trees

into a diamond-figure Paradise –

to stem four rivers from St. Louis

like emerald casket for the Eucharist;

for Micòl in her black canoe

& MLK in Memphis too

sustain that central martyrdom of Mars

just as Dante foresaw, in his basilica –

where little sylvan J

circumferences her almond tree

delightfully... & the grail of tears (Ephphatha)

opens broken hearts across the globe

to each one’s almond Argo

Isis-eyed Hagia Sophia...

see, Henry Church?  & like a strobe

light suddenly unfolded, Henry felt

what Osip felt – accompanied

the rapture of the universe (sighed

with bold Marian... watched iron melt).

8.8.19

toward the 4th of Juliette

DOUBLE WHEELS

Lone robin yodeling his evening threnody

plaintive, solitary

on June’s last day

what would he intimate to me?

That summer was immense & infinite

beyond the figuring

of our (almost) unerring

memory of planetary things.  That what

our dreaming signified was plain

(glory beyond our ken).

Tomorrow’s now & then

only a ghost might fold again

into the origami of a labyrinth

of Chartres granite, Mary

blue – like this contrary

stubborn root, trapped in cement

blooming, bleu Ming, nevertheless

along an Ariadne thread

signed (calligraphy by Ted

the Mason) in a matrix of finesse

by its ineffable Makar (aye

laddie, on a tear

shed from everywhere –

like Ocean River, or the Milky Way)

& the stone drones below human hearing

it rhythmous b-flat bass

someplace in Memphis

where Osiris met his fate, shearing

                     *

Love from its neverending source

(like Jackie K’s wing

saddled to her hat thing

flying off convertible, in Dallas).

Was it a Lincoln?  Was it a star

mobile, from galaxy?

Something moving in the clay

rotates like Ezekiel wheels – where

Louis Armstrong melted to el P

& X marked the spot

(Montale’s really not

at home – it’s Giorgio who has the key

to the garage, muttered the lovely

Michal of Ferrara dunes).

We don’t recall these tunes!

Ecclesia et Synagoga cousins be –

double-wheels within wheels, sez

Zeke, in Minneapolis.

Where Juliet was, once

before she lost face... fell from grace...

– how tender floats the human form,

ephemeral!  Until

we knot yon safety spiel –

until that lightning robin find his worm

& like a Caliban, or Jordan weed

begin to mold the clay

into slow-moving roundelay

(American)... Cahokia high meed.

7.2.19

serpent ocarina

RED RIVER

Dante calibrated to the nth degree

the classic perihelion

of medieval civilization

simply to retrieve the smile of Biche

out of nine coils of Cerberus

& that sulfurous pit

known to Cautantowwit

who cauterizes death with raven caws.

More things in heaven & earth, Horatio.

We’re all caught up in this

wrestling match with the abyss;

there’s no detachment of the mind from woe

nor from the body’s final strife

– breathing with agony

at the crossroads (in RI) –

where Red River meets Sargasso Gulf.

So the poem of America embodies

Juliet upon the parapet

Ophelia with hairnet

(download Vertigo for double-whammies) –

the tensile span of every suicide,

waiting for someone to reach

them (eye-in-hand) – teach

HOPE to hollowed-out children (pied

serpent, surging back to Mendelssohn).

Observe the valiant

canoe, she said.  Plant

almonds, quincunctial.  Amen, amen.

6.27.19

the water-works in New Orleans

CROW-TRACKS

Old Hobo by the river again,

old mule, old Lear, old man.

Ponders the coiled span,

the tension in the plot called Heaven

Versus America.  Indifferent violence,

violent indifference...

What took you into silence,

Julie, at your blossoming – hence

into the shark’s eye of the Bay.

Like an arching jaguar-lunge

of International Orange

claw-marked with irreversible tragedy

your Bridge – hypnotic Taj Mahal

whose lambent shadow hums

of nut-brown kingdoms,

steep ravines for Solomon, Sheba...

The span tracks a continuum

he scans with tentative

crow-tracks.  To live

or die.  From the will’s ultimatum

of despair, your cul-de-sac of self-

slaughter – to the other pole

of faith, serene & whole;

with Stravinsky’s branded Sylph

leaping her epileptic scapegoat pyre

(in Paris, on May 29th)

– O Juliet, my May-month

sister-dove!... my black North Star

       *

– his limping meditation takes him far

upstream, & down.  The dream-

songe, rivery-rêve, beams

her constancy, an equilibrium (wave-mère).

Her source, an Okean of galaxies,

a murmuring Milky Way –

your sempiternal Day

that never dies, your tree of many Jessies...

open your eyes, Hobo, & see!

This kingdom of canoeing

almonds pours – outpacing

Death with fins of Galilee-Ferrari!

Her mickle water-sprite keeps murmuring

like your sibling ghost,

shady elfin host

who climbs from a mandorla, humming

beside you (ahead of you, within you);

& like Latrobe the architect

following his own son to inspect

the water-works in New Orleans, renew

yourself – restore yourself, American! –

in that strange French-Spanish-

Cherokee dreamland.  Swish

go the eucalypus paddles... the plan

of Heaven is a restoration, so –

not slavery, but liberty –

your soul’s birthday.

Love Kingdom’s galaxies begin to glow.

6.24.19

from Hecate came the Kali-Bear

GLOOMY RECESS

Brrr.  Encased in winter nadir.

A word stings like a burr

in my ear, grown morbider.

Out of California.  Excalibur.

Poe’s gloomy recess.  Ceiling

flickering with Neva-light

(limbeck of Hecate).

Ligeia, Solominka... cryptic feeling.

Juliet, embalmed upon a wounded,

senseless word, while

murder dogs each exile

in a stumbling Republic – hounded

refugees are coldly wrenched

from their own children.

What will you do, Hen?

Keep chanting mantra, teeth clenched.

From Hecate came the Kali-Bear,

Blake, Brown, Black –

stuffed Russian Monarch,

Cuffy from the Arctic (Polar) –

Crowned with the crown & splendor

– like Inẽs de Castro, here

in the casque of my ear,

my dear; of violence the silky daughter;

his banner over me was Love.

Your coming-forth, Psyche-

Persephone – out of the sea

in Frisco Bay – out of the starry cove

                     *

laving the Golden Gate, your destiny –

Old Glory Red, & Irish

Green, & Maple Sugar swish

your seal, ex-Californ– Aieeee...

– over the Bay.  Bears baring

every fang, & bearing

everything – boars goring

every Tarquin – innocence betraying!

So follow Hobo Henry’s burro

as he burrows through

her barrow – thorough

ravishing of hollow tumulo!

She’s flown, sweet Thunderbird.

& like Aurora Borealis

hovers above all this

flag-draped befuddlement (light-ward).

Ghost-haunted Morning Star,

Virgo-Astraea –

apotheosis of Sophia,

milky mosaic your dancing floor –

step your basilica sans fear;

the agate lamp atop

your Gate will not stop

raying back toward D.C., dear.

Columbia & Liberty will shine

their sister-lights within

your ark’s palladion;

Agape will this rage refine.

3.9.19

mysteries of the oval garage

BENIGN SPECTACLES

Those benign spectacles of the Franklin Bridge

were long frozen over.

Inside & outside were

captured in a mickle mirror (garage

at the edge of Ferrara).  It wasn’t a map

of America, so much;

only Hobo’s tender clutch

(Falstaff) of Henry’s hand (old chap).

He wants to show you something.  Opens

one puffy palm, and there

tattooed in coppery-red scar

– soft oval eye, mandorla lens.

America sleeps in her own green fields.

Feminine Hamlet croons

to her, lit by Hobo-moons...

Turn back to thy La Paix, Ophelia.

That Egyptian Art-Deco monolith

of Roger, stepping off

the cliff – out of his skiff

into a void of air, the whole dream-myth...

– & it was underfoot all the time.

Like a grail-dish, or agate

eye; a lamp on a frigate

or arc of a torch, Lazarus-rhyme

or Jonah-wing.  The harbor’s safety-net

for flowery Juliet –

buoyant, incarnate

Normandie (gilding Henry’s Mayflower signet).

2.26.19

& know the place for the first time

SOME PALLADIUM

Say we come back to the place of 4

paradisal rivers, & find

it’s a limestone seed-rind

west of St. Lou.  What’s left to explore?

& that grand, sane, towering grainy-mother

is closer, more real

than royal – more U.S. steel

than Byzantine gold (your equal sister-

brother).  How did we get here?

Some palladium of Lamb-

Seeker, out on a limb,

lean-to from Providence canoe... Roger –

halfsome Grain Elevator Song, mayhap

(May 29) – his Pentecost

a Rhody smoke-hole, tossed

southwest, southwest (tornado giddy-up).

Magnanimous hand, reaching toward sunset...

Solomon, seeking Sheba;

a concord St. Columba

spied, twirling Ionian Golden Gate.

Kernel of equal daughters, equal sons –

chaste Isis of West Branch,

Virgo-Astraea in a conch...

a coracle of oracles, lifting crane bones

to life within her almond carousel;

Ophelia & Juliet

transposed to Olivet,

Henry-Persephone retrieved from Hell.

2.22.19