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

for National Poetry Day

DOVE-CANOE

America is the greatest poem,

Walter Whitman wrote.

After the gun, the vote

& gunboat diplomacy... hums home.

Beneath sea to shining sea

lies middle C : a note

on the grand baby boat

between red & blue (for harmony).

Purple mountains’ majesty,

inverted in a mirror

lake – not so Superior

this time, but simple, free.

So must our dream end in despair?

The first inhabitants

ordered the elements

on thankful tables – mysterious share

from Wakan Tanka (Thunderbird).

The greatest poem hums

beneath war drums,

discordant malice, noisy fraud;

it is the sound of the earth itself

awash with slow rivers,

where Jonah hovers

in her dove-canoe – a constant Alph

down to zydeco Cajun Zee.

America, l’âme

riche, la mer...

coo-cawing in cloud-thunder tree.

10.4.18

In the vein of Atlantis

SUNSET GATE

Spring, a project of the Earth.

While she waits for Homo Sapiens

to get over his aggressions –

revert to innocence (a Maypole mirth).

In the beginning... all the begins

of the Beguines... the big

innings.  Whirligig

of river-prairie syncopations...

I went down into the Bottomland,

down to Monk’s Mound.

A Mississippi sound,

a tuning fork of lightning (&

thunder).  I looked into my hand

& felt a gentle eye

look back (speaks Ioway).

Fishnet... veil of mystery... grand

Isis-Life.  Her cryptic tripod

out of Flanders fields

(a Jenna-quivering) yields

Triple-Flem – from Seeker linchpad

over Providence, through keystone

arc, westward... stray

crois (her sunset Gate) –

one orange firetread in the ozone,

warped on muddy waters (surging

to Lousanna).  So

the shield of Buffalo-

Mandan feathers her circlet (corralling).

5.10.16

from Monk's Mound (Cahokia, Illinois)

Statue of Isis (West Branch, Iowa)