rattlesnakes & wild hogs

woodcut by Mary R. Gould

BLANK MIRROR

Hobo & Henry (mirror lakes of ice)

hunker down by the Miss

in apocalyptic freeze.

Global worming – ain’t nice,

offers Hobo.  Henry stands on a log

of spongy cottonwood,

to speechify.  I would

gather everyone in D.C. – slug

it out with themeny!  Hobo : Who he?

King Henny Gowanabe?

Beware Coatlicue,

m’deer!  She got that panoply

um rattlesnakes & wild hogs,

rootin’ all around –

Iagoons, Macboars... ground

Z for Camazone swamp hellhound dogs!

In the blank mirror of unconsciousness

the stone-cold powers

& the lotus-flowers

collide in a collusion...  Heartlessness,

she mutters.  Hobo sunk down.

Cheer up, old boy,

sez Hank.  My Book of J

opines beneath Cordelia’s Crown;

she shone me that Madonna del Parto

flaring like Indian mound –

high Sophie’s dancing ground

(who shall restore our humane Beneficio).

1.30.19

Womb in the cave-shade

ALMOND ARK

They were farmers & shepherds in West Branch,

cartwrights & blacksmiths, laboring

through pain... the rusty ring

of iron clamps, the thick stench

of horse manure, the pigs & cows...

yet took their time for quiet

in the Meeting House – let

runaways abide, lambs browse.

Their silence lodged in protest against

violence itself –

the insolence of Guelf

& Ghibelline, the gangs, the hunts...

the iron dream of domination

locking the brain-cave

in its frozen grave

(creak-echo of damnation).

There was a spring in Tuscan hills,

coiled like a rusty serpent –

green with moss, bent

into turtleshell... old Williams’

spiral (out of Coke, Blackstone).

Mules’ rustic rights

& supernatural delights

limp into leaves of a live-oak woman –

her heavy womb in the cave-shade

like a Negus by the Nile

hidden for a while...

almond ark of spring (oak-apple maid).

5.11.16

Quaker Meeting House, Scattergood School, West Branch, Iowa

Yellow-gold forsythia

TWO CIRCLES

Down by the spring river, tossing sticks

in prehistoric Mizz,

my Jordan – little Isis-

canoes, or Ferrarese six-

wheelers; in my mind’s darkroom

recalling you – Love’s raven-

haired sybil (guardian

at the Rock’s entrance).  Your gloom

when my father’s birthday wheeled around

each April.  The yellow-gold

forsythia enfold

your mother’s grave, who died... O sound

those flowery depths, Ophelia –

and rise again!  He was

a good man – rays

of intellectual Amor blessed his day;

he might have walked her from that grave.

A little light only,

through camera oscura...

you know.  You showed me her cave

in San Francisco’s spare kitchen –

where a thin light-blade

infiltrates the Maid

so Piero’s hypno-sarabande might spin

anew (red cedar, blue spruce, evergreen).

Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with

Two Circles... one light-heavy scythe

defines this wheel’s circumference (unseen).

4.12.16