Good Friday in Wales

MEDITATION ROOM

My mother’s late twin watercolor

(Bardsey Island, 2002).  Dark

room, light room.  Look

through the window to the cemetery –

crumbled walls in Wales, a stony cross.

Pale green as early April

outside the infirmary – still,

fresh, frail.  Her final brush with grass,

her hopeful air.  The Boanerges

were the Sons of Thunder –

redheads, most likely – Dioscuri

in their scarlet robes – woodpeckers,

Thunderbirds (like my two redhead brothers).

Dakota found him on the earth

near Red Wing – red-feathered

Thunder-Birdman (portent for Little Crow).

Thunder-&-lightning were one mighty Bird –

a firebird, roaring crimson.

Fire-flinging wingèd one –

a Persian peacock (Rhody Red?)

or Phoenix, soaring like a rainbow

from gray winter ash.

Woodpecker, with his calabash

tap-tapping oaks for golden honey-glow

Morse codes the closing of an Iron Age

& restoration of that Paradise

the Son of Davy Jonah scries

from his doom-rood.  Just turn the page,

                    *

he cries.  Along this feathered spine

where all the leaves are bound,

your legend of Twin-Town –

refuge for sacred monsters (in a pine

grove, under Ariadne’s Crown,

northward of everywhere).

The holy child of Mary

is such a singularity.  Scapegoat-twin,

divine-human, he will dethrone the kings

with goldenrod of charity;

rise from his bed of cruelty

with flames of sunflower – with Easter wings.

Just beyond my mother’s watercolor

David Jones grotto, I glimpse

tall flickering cave-nymphs…

a moonlit retina (of temple vault, pillar).

Twin rooms, of light & dark, enclosed

(like matryoshka dolls) inside

each other.  Casket-scaffold

for a model ship, perhaps?  Micòl's

canoe?  A meditation room

for mourning Magdalen.

Through tears of rage… vision.

A ragged almond tree, coming to bloom;

immense pressure of gravity, around a shell;

the coracle of wounded heart

lifting as purple columbine – a spurt

from humming bird-nest (thunder-sky-well).

4.10.20

Traverse des Sioux

LITTLE CROW

Down by the Minnesota River

choked with fertilizer –

shallow brown water of

Traverse des Sioux.  It was here

the white man stole the territory

with treaty signed in smoke

(fake handshake, mock

friendship).  We didn’t mean it – sorry.

Eleven years later (1862)

starved, dispossessed

the scar broke open (led

by blue, reluctant Little Crow).

Extermination of the buffalo

echoed the reservation

camp.  To build a nation

all these savages must go.

The lightweight arc of birch canoe

is like an eyebrow (wingbone

frame, sutured to one

Rose Island – lamp of Manitou).

We’re limping back to Providence.

The whole grotesquerie

of violence & perfidy

to be forgone (washed in the silence

of the sea).  Down Mississippi way

you feel a salty shell wash

through fingers... an eyelash

leach one tear, slowly.  Hey ey.

12.11.17

the family woodpecker

STEEP RAVINE

Quiet today along the river.

In the steep ravine, only

the Morse drum-talky

of the family Woodpecker

interrogates the oaks with hollow

query.  Where are you,

worm?  Job’s blue.

Ice-packed for the long, Nile-slow

Egyptian winter, thick with Pharaoh-

dolour, pyramidical –

ridiculous cyclical

suffering, encased in snow.

It’s not his fault, & he will tell you so.

O, if these canyons were

only in a book!  We’re

leaving – desiccated, delicate.  Don’t go.

The poet has her humors – she’s

devoted to them, wholly.

Lear’s wise Fool, she’ll

follow Boaz carrying the heaves

out loud, in sheaves.  The polis, too,

be uncobbled knowledge.  What

vaguely familial knot

of rivals, bickering horseshoe

favors for grubs, is this?

Not Man-Eat-Too-Much

or Minotaur – no, such

rapacity’s reserved for the abyss

                *

of Pole Star Netherworld (Étoile

du Nord).  Little Crow

stood there, y’know –

with the Red Wing clan, in a potted bowl

of leers.  Stood with the scapegoat

as a prophet should – charisma

whirling in the twister-eye

(magenta bronze, the serpent-calumet).

Who sees him sky-hole in this mess?

Light imperturbable

as Mississippi burble

through a transparent lamb-lattice –

the holeness of that holy garment

parti-colored Joseph wore,

shellacquered semaphore

way under limestone sediment

of painful jealousies & wounded hate.

Her singular vocation,

musing on desolation

til scarred earth-pangs abate –

bored by a dream of early days.

Canoe of Camelot,

Lake-Lady’s thunder-knot...

the old bare dance, woodpecker maze

of placid Oak-Gal Day – a writ of spring

(St. Vitus 1913

Paris Corn Maiden)

that joins Creation to Thanksgiving.

3.9.17

Red Wing colors

TWIN WINGS

Sun through winter clouds, light

grays, pale blues...

Red Wing colors –

Mississippi stoneware (molded tight).

The heavy clay, churned by the river.

Earth forms distend,

disintegrate... days end,

begin... arrows in a quiver

of darkness.  Black Sea, cold, dead.

Salt lashing the eyes,

unseeing eyes – Oedipus

in his beast maze (Minotaur Ed).

Bruegel with his traps & nets.

Sardonic Injun Joe.

Taut lips of Little Crow.

To the bottomland we go, eaglets –

where Janus wrestles in the ice

with icon of his father.

Horned (narwhal weather).

Stars nest in a pair of dice.

High in stretched vaults of shade

stone elms lean down

over a golden corn-

maze (Ariadne made).

Light-roping constellations chant

reunion, reconcilement –

on twin wings of prairie-tent

coulombe (your ghostly complement).

1.31.17

a baby year

POLAR NIGHT

                               for Chris Kraemer

Begins, a baby year.  Crawls out,

survivor, bearded with ice.

Minnehaha Falls

not (b-flat, sustained).  Hobo is stout

now as Shostakovich – repairs

the floppy mosquito screen

on vacant gazebo.  Seen

more mangy homes, the bum declares.

Remembers that other Epiphany

50 years before...

with Chris the carpenter

in Soho, & Ernst Neizvestny –

three rootless cosmopolitans

christening his studio

with vodka – dla vashego

zdarovya!  Hunched on some Titan’s

crucifix of railroad ties

laid out across the floor.

Moira’s “Mask of Sorrow”

on the eastern wall (king-size

Golgotha-face, Vladivostok).

Troy’s brother Gabe

there, too – my chemo sabe

trying to toot the sunshine back

with his brass headpiece (soldered

to holey, breathy crown).

Fenced about with unknown

renown, we are, Hobo purred –

                     *

doddered.  The thatch be windblown.

The star be nowhere

to be seen.  The Minotaur

harried our return – he was like a stone

blocking all the arteries, squeezing

the flowers.  So we sang Kaddish

for the kids, in plain English –

scrannel our pennywhistles, wheezing

Pipestone smoke... remember now?

Down by Little Crow’s tent.

Where Thunderbird bent

his twisted contrails, laid so low.

St. Paul tied up in a Christmas bow

the whole Fort Snelling crew –

neat.  & they’ll forgive you, too,

Minneapolis – just let them Gypsies go.

Morning Star & Evening Star

are twins, brother & sister.

The planet limps... her

black burn-scars all covered are

in tender hexagoons of fleecy

tinder.  Let us pray.

One black-yellow butterfly

sleeps in gray winter crèche – she

furls her wispy shroud tight, tight.

The Minotaur has dropped

his cup.  It rolls... it stopped.

One pearl winks out of polar night.

1.3.17