Dante caught the bug

FORSAKEN MINOTAUR

Somewhere between Venice & Ravenna

(Rimini?) – on an errand

for Lord Guido, friend

& host – Dante caught the bug (malaria?).

All those goat-paths of exile

all those curial corridors

mostly meant chores.

The heart stays just a brief while.

A trembling bird unfurls wing-feathers

in the still woods of March;

hear her voice catch

racing through the final chapters

of winter.  While every ghost of Alighieri

clusters by the Rubicon…

that stream of lethal human

fish-traps (Caesar-veins of slavery).

Henry, his curly churl, would stalk

through the rose cloud

of his quatrain (loud

quarantine) to sit upon his dark

& Rheingold throne (where Caesars reign).

The desolations… how

to begin?  Let’s start now.

Assemble palms to ease real pain.

Clap him in irons, or set him free.

Exiled from sybil-sylph

the rage becomes himself –

forsaken Minotaur of you & me.

3.15.20

eyes of March

CHASTE EYE

I took a little walk today

slipping over the ice.

The earth veiled in sadness

by violence & bigotry –

Christchurch & the world in mourning.

A bird-of-paradise

merging with Maui skies

ricochets low planetary droning.

The Ides of March.  Caesar must die

to instaurate the Empire,

bleeding for the crowd on fire.

Republican conspirators have gone awry.

The throne requires a figurehead.

The bronze serpent is nailed

on Golgotha – is hailed

Messiah, INRI.  The king is dead.

This frozen hollow by the brown river

is full of streaming sound.

Little rivulets, underground

where Berryman left town forever.

An old man’s presentiment of spring

is like a lost heartbeat...

& somewhere nearby, a sweet

selfless affection tunes her string.

We must delve deeper into this

my friend, my limping muse.

Natasha’s temple (Voronezh)

sings with a chaste eye (goldfinch kiss).

3.15.19

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

the Ides of March in its idea

DOUBLE-BIND

That brilliant peacock-feathered eagle

Joachim fingerpainted

on parchment (ancient

plummet out of Calabrian ingle-

cave) figured the Holy Ghost –

monarch of the air,

white-haired regal raptor

rapt to avenge every Tuscan boast.

I marvel at the prestidigitation

of the priestly mind –

the Akeda, a double-bind,

knotting its pivotal vocation

under the shadow of those gilded wings...

that mountebank YHWH

in his coyote way

the widerruf of pyramidal things.

Folktales & myths were a defense.

Mechanism of the nurse

to lullaby the curse

& soothe the children in their tents...

they builded better than they knew.

The king is dead, long

live the king.  Bong

sounds the gong – old Caesar’s through.

Absolute control is crumbling.

Even now, the axe

is laid to the root... don’t

ask.  Meek Joachim is mumbling.

3.15.18

the Ids of March

LITTLE ISLAND

                                the fallow air grows milky

The Rio shines in quietness,

mottled by fading ice.

Cato the Woodpecker is

prince of cottonwoods – his highness

tock-tocks like Railsplitter toward

the taproot of Twin Cities’

canker sores.  He’s

whittling his wooden law – a word

scrimshawn against all takers,

all Caesars of commonweal,

in the court of last appeal –

galactic axle of the makers.

Is this a holiday?  The soothsayer’s

a dreamer (pass, tense).

Cinna lost his innocence

mangled among conspirators –

murdering for liberty (the mob

took it another way).

Is this a holiday?

The Ids are on the march – to Nob

Hill, where nabobs are on fire

amid their books.  Moses

threw tomes into a rose-

bush (ruby thorn in rabid empire)

& King David warped his harp

with smooth rushes & grass –

his humble plant shall pass

anthills of Tyre, the minnow tarp

                   *

of Lucifer – the arrogant hare

shall slip behind the turtle

& the dove shall hurtle

like a hummingbird (plum everywhere).

The sea wind washes the shoreline;

she lifts my face toward

her calm sunlight.  The sword

shall pierce your own heart, Minute Man,

little island seeker after Liberty –

her candle glimmers, copper-

green, where grasshopper

& ant both anchor.  Charity

of Chartres, Maid of Orleans,

Spirit of St. Louis

circling toward Paris,

read us what soul freedom means –

infinite mercy & joy

lifting the universe

from snowy ovoidness

into a Shakespeare play –

late Mississippian romance

only the first people

have beheld.  Quadruple

diamond, sapphire expanse,

arc of a Southern Cross above

refulgent rose island –

we expiate... to understand

your ever-brimming streams of Love.

3.15.17

pileated woodpecker

Crossing the Rubicon, again...

ONE SPRING

The river across the street still flows

under thickening ice, ceaseless.

Its lesser tributaries

(Minnesota, Minnehaha) also

persist – all of them subsiding

into Ocean River

finally (only a quiver

rippling Time).  Julius is sliding

a handkerchief across his brow

in 49 B.C.

The die is cast, sez he.

Yokels on Rubicon blow

tubas now – let War decide.

World empire in his grip,

peace is ordained.  Slip

the noose over each parricide

(Brutus, Absalom); the father’s

kingdom will be certified,

et ratified, in blood.

Shadow of a kingfisher

rotating in graffiti’d alcove.

Boethius & father

(Symmachus) share

fort et dur... Ravenna love-

keen (after bronze millennium).

Time’s universal –

history’s rehearsal

for a mangy star-profundum

                 *

deeper in the soul o’man

than Solomon arrayed

or Emperor betrayed.

An agate, tossed in Jordan

sand.  Halcyon day (of almond

shade, & waterfall).

Life’s good, is all –

big benison de tout l’monde.

Reaches through the harvest of

your Martian scythe, O

Death, to something more –

the milky Rio of the Blest.

It is Beyond.  It’s over yonder.

Everywoman’s Eridanos,

Poe’s Eureka.  Moses

glimpsed it in his heart’s far

island (yours, mine) – soul

liberty’s Belle Isle –

Eternity (only

a smile from here).  Glows, whole.

There were 4 rivers flowing

out of Eden, toward

House of 4 Pines (word

lost on the wind).  All knowing

& loving, all doing & being

gathered in a khipu

knot... arc of yew

over limestone grave (one spring).

1.11.16

Minnehaha Falls

Ides of October

LIPS MONASTERY

This bright transparency of mid-

October Providence –

sweet-sad remembrance

of the princely sun (Caesar’s eyelid,

drooping into Ides).  Boethius,

last of the Romans, slips

away into Sophia-deeps,

drowses beneath dogwood leaves;

little feathery flesh-tone coins

of wild oats dangle, sway

on pale green stalks today.

She’ll plant them with Galla’s remains,

he mutters to himself.  The monarch’s

just a social butterfly;

none need any longer die

in her doctrine.  Light-waves, arcs

of arches, radiating from

a central hearth... archaic

woodland (near Itasca)

where the springing pendulum

of springs is born.  Moss-green Alph

to mauve Omega, vibrant

strings (O most ancient

of lays!) knot Ocarina Everysylph

into her vale of Inca-tiers –

a tinder Lips Monastery,

quicksilver Philosophy

lifts Rome to Mexican cedars.

10.15.15

tame wild oats