ledge of regal limestone

HUMAN PLEDGE

The cool dry tesserae congeal

in Sant’ Apollinaris –

dance, coalesce

into high figures of a royal seal.

Exalted features... recognizable.

Your neighbors (Limentani).

Riding bikes to the sea

to get away from scent of stable

(Mussolini’s racehorses).

That was then; this

is placid Minneapolis.

We’re not like them, of course (off-course).

The constitution of a human pledge

blazons these images

from pencil-boxes... pages

scratched out.  Natasha’s ledge

of regal limestone – living rock,

streaked honey-colored

marble.  Moss-layered

icon, limpid under chopping block.

Our covenants of disputation

rest on implicit ground;

Rhode Island in the round,

an Ocean State of transmutation.

The bond of love is clean as salt,

as plain as day.  We are

redeemed by holy fire.

The one you seek has left the vault.

6.30.18

limestone eyelid

TEXAS HERON

The smoking poilu, in his pink turban

like a blasted basilica

bent over Ravenna

marshland.  Many thousand gone.

His ferrous requiem for Texas heron –

wings on migration,

Zion to destination

unknown (indifferent shotgun).

A ghost dance of repetitive waves.

Arthur in Otranto,

Geo in Ferrara...

Micòl & Black Elk (lead-gray graves

in crowds).  A quiet cemetery

full of new-mown grass.

They Shall Not Pass.

Heaven & earth... won’t fade away.

The Magdala Stone... hasn’t figured

yet.  Her equilibrium

of magnanimity (come,

stay!) – like rain over the weird

Mammon of idle selfishness...

a motive for release.

She’s coming, Orpheus –

returning, Willy – rose of Inverness

or little almond tree – Mary

shedding lambent grace

or Jenny Falcon-Ace –

Love’s fiery knot (bright quipu-tree).

4.25.18

domestic hellenism

REMBRANDT WORLD

Imagine a humble Rembrandt world

(domestic hellenism, say)

where everything is (replay,

rusty Super-8) revealed –

unsealed, familiar testament

wherein you were sown

amid Grant Wood corn

(Birthplace of Herbert Hoover), bent

beneath pewter thunderheads

like wheat long-planted

at a battlefield (wind-

harrowed silos, homesteads).

By the rude bridge that arched the flood

– the wordspan, carved against

despair (Grace hastens

with her furnace-lamp... slight lift of mood)

here once the embattled farmers stood

– measuring early earth,

where your Dream (4th

of J?) becomes flesh & blood

& fired the shot heard round the world.

Ariosto in Ferrara,

say – that avian eye

on tyranny (Limentani’s branded

heron-lid).  Poetry is resistance

against the Emperor

of pyramidal distemper;

Concord... Voronezh... (buoyant equivalence).

4.19.18

ship of wind

EGYPTIAN BARGE

A prairie fire like a freight train

fed by wind (your searing

Word).  Not for hearing

but for doing... here it comes again.

Will cauterize your poetry

to cinder of Egyptian

barge.  Lips burn

ice friezes (hay society).

A replica of ancient Greece,

delicate, peevish...

stern Rome’s thievish

siblings (disguised in fleece).

The Pilgrims’ covenant of winter

light – bewildered, free –

a broken redwood tree

(toppled by Oldman’s greedy splinter-

group).  The milk train of the nations

merges with its blistered

rails.  Longfellow heard

rain fall... Berryman damnations.

Who shivers like a flame against

the edge?  Is it Henry

hisself (decrepit Limentani)?

The canoe in the garage (All Saints’

Day shrine)?  Her candle, wavering

above extinction... hum

of rock-dove (columbarium).

Rose bridge of lips, life-savoring.

4.18.18