on the North Shore of the North Star state

SOFT KISS

Not far from Berryman’s Witch’s Hat

in Prospect Park, off Arthur Ave

Henry beholds spring showers lave

his plague-burnt Vale of Josaphat

(in Minneapolis).  It is a hard Lent

& shrunken plain to see –

April trundling mournfully

to graveyards.  Brash head bent,

hobo Henry Hal recounts his crimes

(near Purgatory Chasm,

in Newport).  Hopes a chrism

helps redeem his own end times

along Humility Way – the icy treason

of a lodestone heart.

His mother’s art

pierces also, beyond reason –

those 4 unsoldered quarters of clay tile

where Henry & Francesca swim

below a swirling rim

of Gooseberry Falls (old Ravlin file)

in the blithe innocence of marriage

unbetrayed… unmade,

not yet.  Like Longfellow glade,

or negative of Dante’s personal stage

(Circle of Lust) the two of us

will splash, forever smiling

in that riverine, beguiling

clay lost Paradise of faithfulness

                   *

& O the hubris of Superior Prince Hal!

To think he’d play the alpha male

to Berryman, beyond the pale –

snow-bent J. Beerust, in his dream-corral!

My clay ticks slowly on its glitter-wheel

toward kiln of Judgement Day.

But you might take another way,

Kidron – follow the foamy V of keel

into that Ocean River of the galaxies;

gaze up into the Royal Arch

where smile-canoe arcs

over candescent happiness... frees

hearts & souls into the wholeness

they were meant to seize!

That Charity of charities,

that source of every brimming goodness...

the grace of Miriam-consent (to give)...

true North Star of the Sea!

Friend Berryman would be

beside me here, in this infinitive

to live – an evergreen, emerald

eternity of growth –

an exponential for a moth

(or butterfly) to find – New World

born from the Old, as wings from chrysalis

when Spirit strokes like Thunder

through clay rings… & under

your rose aye of Providence (soft kiss).

3.25.20

in the Grand Army of the Republic

CLEAR BREEZE

Hank limps onward, like a lost private

in the Grand Army of the Republic

through swamps above Nilotic

Memphis – or plug of gneiss granite

broken loose from Superior shoreline

(euphoric azure of sea air

lifting over the spare

curves of rusted railroad iron).

We carry so much indifferent amnesia,

sleepwalking across Earth.

A measureless unplumbed worth

overshadows our shadows (ecclesia

del girasole… sunflower’s rotation

in the silence of Ravenna

backwater).  Antenna-

headed cave figures, in Papillon

foreshadow these elongate, lantern-

eyed hierarchs of grace –

a shadow ladder, on a base

of basalt (box-within-a-box of Lincoln

logs).  A matryoshka puzzle toy

from Kiev, or Constantinople;

an emerald imago of all people

in mild irises of Maximus (old boy-

martyr).  Matrix, crosshair lens –

vertigo of San Francesco

whorled to the point of zero,

razor-sharp.  Star of St. Stephen’s,

                  *

or the sea.  Is shadow-hero

of millions of shadows, round-

about… perceptible ground

or incarnation of your own heart’s

broken-down ego (melted to music).

Is Jonah of your ocean,

Columba… is feminine

Adonai of Morning Star (mystic

bloom, afloat over Cahokia).  Is

Gateway steel of your

clear breeze, Superior –

Osiris to your adamantine Isis

(Psyche-Amor).  In Ford Theatre

the violence comes to a head.

A Service of the Dead

melds Abraham to one frail butterfly-

phantom – one solidarity of soul.

Whim’s monarch, hoboing

from Mexico, to spring

the news… Pinetop’s True-Loving Honor Roll.

In the heart of the heart of hearts

where all the waters start,

we’re no longer apart –

little acorn coracle sea-charts

mark the almond center of the diagram.

Here the luminous shadow

smiles out of clay wheelbarrow,

& love never ends (warbling I AM).

2.11.20

like waves of the sea

Occasionally I'm going to disobey my own resolution, and post new poems from Ravenna Diagram.  Happy Midsummer Day...

GREEN PILLARS

Spell me the poem including history

if Providence on earth

blooms, Rhodian... Arthur

ever returning, like waves of the sea –

mesmerized & mesmerizing,

in disguise (as George

the gardener).  So merge,

now, emerge, with enterprising

pioneers of happiness, your

boon companions, in

loon-call theremin

borne toward a Lake Superior

of dreams – one cup of fresh water

lifted to the moon

of manna-honey – one

mute field note in the Chronicle of Mutter-

Patter.  A flimsy paper nautilus

skims her light pinnace

over the sea-surface –

her brood chamber full of caprice,

her Ocean State a colony

of Turtledove Cloud-

World.  A dream-word

sang out of a rooted cedar tree –

so old, Time had forgotten her;

so strong, her smile

threads from green pillars

outlasting the Wars to End All War.

6.24.16