searching the pipeline

GREEN FLEURETTE

With a guttering cigarette-stub candelabra

planted on his tin pan rim

old Hobo H., yea verily him,

sets off, vagrant pilgrim, on his last hurrah.

& recalls that fond octagonal gazebo

where many a summer

found him (quizzical plumber)

searching the pipeline for Cy Manitou.

High & low, & up & down the river

led by that whistling flit

of Ray Caw-somuchwit (tight

Gansett smokehole, domed in Ravenna)

Hobo went on, a-glide like some water-bat

round that chartless labyrinth

amazed with gold, & crème

de menthe – a little green fleurette

upsprung ‘mid scattered fallen leaves

& spinning like a gyroscope

cross-threaded by Hope

so’s to balance what him heart conceives.

For that whisper-caw of Wakan Tanka

cries – all the temples of Solomon

& all the domes of Justinian

are but the models of a living Anchor,

planted ‘twixt the temples of your mind

beside the hearth-fire in your heart.

O speaking brook, where rivers start!

Handy RI aerie (in your eye to find).

3.26.20

like spinning Jenny Gyre

SAFETY LINES

The late-May lilacs are long gone

but light grey limbs

& the green leaves rim

the grass with shade yet, absent one.

The sound of an ocean softly seething

in the branches overhead.

Is she alive or dead –

my sainted, tainted Juliet?  Still breathing

somewhere?  Imago or Imogen...

merely some ghoulish Ravlin-

Gouldash revenant, then?

Some Beatrice-crystal-Poe routine,

arising ghastly from dank ditch-ravine?

But no... a memory

lifts all azury

from sparkle-spray beneath benign

leap of wide Golden Gate.  Almond-

eyed sprite, a-whirl

like spinning Jenny Gyre

balanced on catenary wire... light bond

that ravels tout le monde... infinite

undisplaceable safety net

& cloudy calumet

confirming universal concord... so be it!

Grave knot that tightens less & less

toward infinite regress

of infinitesimal kiss

(minute atomic balm of tenderness

                     *

merging without mixture or separateness).

Maximus once limned it thus,

the monk who bore witness

(with loss of limb) for concept Orthodox –

incarnate knot of human & divine,

united unlikeness – like

that tomb slab, a limestone block

marked by what seems a breaking line

but only seems; the two are one

in one Person, of three

in all; still guarantee

amid the waltz of turning sun & moon

of Love’s immoveable eternity.

Out of deep matrix

of Ocean – intergalactic

scheme of merry stars in that sea...

inconceivable conception of

all origins (harmonic

correlations, thick

with measureless & dancing life).

The Manitou all people know,

Aquinas wrote.  The God

who dreamed this serenade...

we meet you in the shady slough

beneath great knots of wild grapevines

beside the muddy Jordan –

down by where solitary John

once cast a seine for Jonah (safety lines).

7.11.18

O day-song of a day

MINUSCULE EDIFICE

Some ancient Oklahoma sage

knows life as integral

& whole.  A round corral

of circle dance (light wind on stage).

One heartbeat, straight from Manitou.

John in the river, calling

each to prayer, & fasting –

washing clean (life to renew).

The little red plastic lawn chair

Sophie uses catches

the sun.  Minuscule edifice

subject to ridicule, she will suffer

small kids to be comfortable here.

Her persecuted refugee

will be your judge someday –

the heart of old Bluejay casts out fear.

Some perfect day in June, she’ll come

for you...  Shine, raving dove

from Resurrection grave!

She’ll ask what you have done, she’ll sum

you up.  And it’s not too late

(amid these arcs of oak

& pine) to add your spoke

to the wheel of penetrating light –

to hear Natasha’s whispered promise

in the ear of Mandelstam

& join the rapture of a psalm

clasped in her kiss within a kiss.

6.13.18

tutelary loon

MURAL CROWN

The river rifles arctic blue today

beneath nippy April wind.

Hobo his way will wend

downhill, ahoy, with the current, hey.

His notebooks stew in crumpled chaos,

like a Burchfield swamp in June –

half cricket calendar, half jejune

palimpsest (July stinks Janus).

Bleak melancholy in Ohio.

Spooks in lean eaves.

Storks bundling wet sheaves

across the ‘30s.  Good material, O.

Hobo looks up from bottomland.

He holds an eye-in-hand –

muddy Cahokia (one grain

of sand).  Just Clay’s j-jug band.

These bricks are 28 feet thick.

A pyramid, almost –

only Hunky Ghost

(Ho-Chunk) could make this stick-up

stick.  Like Killers of the Flower

Moon.  Getch’r Manitou

(just one gris dollar few)

before she get you.  Evening hour

now.  Mire-flowering almond tree

out of Voronezh (or Galilee) –

your mural crown, Tyche.

Hyacinth madeleine (waiting for me).

4.6.18

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

we must carve a consensus

MOON-SHADOW

The Seekers gathered on the shore

of Providence River.

Canonicus (Indian giver)

steered them to festal hearth, & more.

Warm wholeness, understood by all.

We must carve a consensus

like log canoe, he says.

All flows from Manitou – not full

of vanity & pride, but like

a farmer in disguise –

gentle kenosis-

metamorphosis (Nokomis Lake).

The raging trickster flings flaming

orange bars into stream

burnt like a furnace-dream –

a grasping Minotaur, defaming

Imogen... moon-shadow (of the sun

of Man).  Eurydice,

Psyche...  Clover’s Henri,

en camouflage (homespun)...

Light on the river frames a simple

cloverleaf of spring.

Fond Pocahontas-swing

where fern unfurls (from ample

fiddlehead to wavy palm).

Whisper me back to you,

Morning.  The crown’s U-

turn rivets an oak bee-hum.

11.30.17

the ordinary Union

KNIT WOOL

                 Eternity, O Eternity! That is our business.

                                                       – Roger Williams

She watches crows play in the sky

above her balcony.

Her dregs of memory

transmute to gaiety, give death the lie.

Cautantowwit was Raven-Lord

of Narragansetts.  Old

Canonicus told

Roger how dead souls were borne toward

Mexico, far off southwest...

Rog quilled it down.

That chief of great renown

was kind to him.  Knit wool is best

around head, limbs & heart

when winter ice descends.

I’m dreaming, friends.

One campfire (circling) is all my art.

The Red Wing river-clay is heavy,

as my mother knows.

O the harsh blows

that fall like thunder (Romeo, Julie)...

The body’s weight is catenary

Golden Gate (so

Jasper shows).  Blow,

Manitou... bring back the glory

of the ordinary Union.  It shall be

– when we return to Thee,

from sea to shining sea –

uncommon good (benevolent Eternity).

11.29.17

light grows lighter

CATLIN WATERCOLOR

Late August light grows lighter.  Wispy

between extended shadows.

The cricket chorus has

a song for this, by Mississippi

banks – that bronze sustaining bass

in parallax of plaintive

high-pitched creel.  I’ve 

got to plead the crickets’ case,

quizzical Hobo mumbles to himself.

What good’s that Easter

Resurrection, if there

be no faery morn, silkworm to elf?

That is, no general coming back

to life... old Yeats’s sense

of unquenchable experience?

Manitou pipes at Fond du Lac...

as in a Catlin watercolor

along shores of Great River

life-lines   etched forever

in raven-ink barge Seine-trawler

or in a summer garden   with Apollinaire

our flimsy smoke lifting above

rooftops   & fading   eve of

war   Christ the Pilot in the air

over our heads   the gentle hero

retiring into poplar-voice

grey Hobo   warbling rejoice

inscrutable Holy Wisdom   flutters near

8.25.17

spoke of a water-wheel

SALT WAVE

Along the riverbank, these rich

dark green moss-terraces;

a miniature forest

spreading wide along each niche

of Pliocene sea-limestone.

Archive of mollusc-whorl

& sea-worm spiral

layers of plastered ivory linen.

An infinitely tiny bronze

french horn accompanies

trompette marine – Willie’s

gauzy smoke-signal de Paris;

petrified remains of carven

calumet from Red Wing,

maybe.  This is nothing

like a Pipestone atlatl, Raven

croaks.  Spoke of a water-wheel,

more likely.  Jessie O’s

clay potter swells

with gentle pats & frills – feel

how her spine of Fish-Man surfaces

profound supremacy of whale!

A wheel that will not fail

springs to its trickle-task, washes

the wilderness from every face

until its light-green glory

meshes Ezekiel’s story –

wheel wends with wheel (a carapace

                *

of pearl enfolds that golden bough)

until a plangent joy

beams from unfurling J

in spokes of rose aye-aye lands now –

one Great Red Spot, so thundery

& jovial – one Yahweh-

Manitou, in one streamway –

the Rio del Espiritu, at play

across prairies & meadowlands

in centrifugal fugue –

day-lily orange bugle-

calls, mauvelets a monarch understands –

until at last the torch of Liberty

lifts from her copper shroud

to chant moss-green out loud

& set the Mississippi free...

As when the labyrinth of St. Louis

glimmers wheat-gold amid

deep shade (Monk’s Mound)

– & signs the tidal drone (commence!)

to shift the Earth from fraudulence –

fallacious Midas-usura

whose Minotaur is US-

R-US – whose glow of carbon flatulence

burns orange rage (from White House

into every gilded cage)

& all the world’s a stage

for strutting tyros in malevolence...

                *

Peace is another way.  Humility.

How Eeyore-mule (San Fran)

transmutes to Eero Saarinen.

With the power  of soul   any-

thing is possible   the tacit poverty

of yearning love  bent

by Br’er Francesco’s Lent

into a welcoming   equality

chaste eye of akme equity

out of an almond branch

in Petersburg   will launch

once more   peals of humanity

from the great Rose of Providence

wheeling & swinging wide

with Chartres sunlight   O glide

with me   downstream, Hobo   immense

Pacific beckons   from the galaxies

where kind Melchizedek

pours milk of live-oak

acorn mead   shares bread   from nursing

YHWH’s heart   sweet Manitou’s   delight.

Enfolded in the subtle veil

of golden fleece   & gray whale-

oil   that infinite fine safety-net

swings like a hammock in the breeze

beneath twin flaming pillars

where a starfish falls

& lifts her   from salt wave   to Paradise

7.19.17

ovals over pyramids

WAKAN TANKA

That poor man’s body frozen in the snow

at Wounded Knee.

Big Foot, mistaken for somebody

else (Sasquatch?  Goliath?).  Into

the valley of the shadow goes, Raven.

Wisdom & humility,

twin sisters.  See

how the old chief aches for comprehension.

Forbearance, mutual understanding,

peace.  In short supply

fallen under Assyria –

out in the sticks (Badlands), freezing.

When flour’s ground, small insects too

are crushed.  Bullish philosophy

for young rough riders, bloody

with their ba-ball clubs (Yankee, Hindu).

Boys ape men’s wars for an inheritance.

The monarch, meanwhile, churns

reptile venom – earns

replication in a prairie sundance

all the way to Mexico.  A delicate

sword fight with Judy Hotchkiss

(deadly bees taken amiss

lead Rachel down to Sheol, Juliet)

ends in snowballing massacre

the day after (frozen

conclusion).  Take me away

from these scenes, black star

                *

of harvest moon – bury them in trench

to hide the crying shame

of unquenched hell-flame

(mustard kiln rank with lime-stench).

Eyes frost over.  Hopelessness

of dauber’s art.  Oddly

placed boulders, hardly

balanced on the tip of mysterious

20th century placement & weathering.

Glazed over enough, yah?

Giotto’s all the cry

now, Cimabue – gag order on that thing

hung over the Capitol (New Glum).

Crowds trading places

for a view of the races

at State Fair (Human Bird-Hum).

Awake, Russia!  Make America

Great Again!  Nation

shall lift gas station

against nation – fail, Columbia!

Everything is inside out, & there’s

the Salamanca forest

for recalcitrant peacocks.

Even so.  This grey pebble, this

kamen soldier, simple carpenter

might open just one eye

in palm of clay hand, see –

check the hoary Isis river-

                *

level, placed like a Franklin Bridge

between twin banks.

Through airy arc (thanks,

Saarinen) soars prairie Wind-Wedge

(spooky Manitou’s whole altar).

She’s not a Ghost Dance,

she’s an entrance-trance –

a way of weighing Light Feather

against your heavy heart (soul-

sorrow).  Lake Victoria

or little Lake Itasca

spring to mind – Madonna del

Parto – light-skipping lamp-sheep

traipsing grass mosaic

in shade-sketch (archaic

camera oscura).  Black Elk sleeps

& dreams.  Big Foot & Wounded Knee

& Buried Heart &

Yearning Soul & Mind

lift from that heap of yesterday...

light feather-memory.  Young one

be strong, be good,

be not afraid.  World

law of gentleness is airy crown –

breeze breathing through the universe

bestowing life upon

worried monkeys – sun-

heart of Wakan Tanka (Jesus-nurse).

7.13.17

elephant fig tree

TWISTY CALUMET

The grey matter beneath the gray dome

over the elephant’s

great brow.  Intelligent

murmur through muted horn, become

flute-sound of turtledove – a rose-

gray granite labyrinth

in miniature (by mouth

of elephant-gate) whose lid will close

this casket blossoming with images.

A concordance of old & new,

the synagogue-ecclesia

of you & me (through corny stages

of a mystery play).  Tall gnomon

of a totem pole (Raven

shadow in the grim ravine,

the wooden idol in its barren

cul-de-sac) points toward the sun.

It is Cautantowwit,

testing your trickster-wit,

lifting his twisty calumet (smoke, son).

Ineffable infinity of Manitou

embodied now – made

manifest in mode

of neighbor Nazarene, addressing you.

Come into my garden, urges he;

the Magdalen has found me,

so shall thee –

her almond eye’s polarity

    *

seeps Providential clarity

as clear as spring rain,

clear as tears.  Enter

my garden, friend – you’ll see.

My Providence was like a field

where Hobo limped through

wildflowers, bumbled into

common day – let childhood yield

to manhood, womanhood – O bright

ripe liberty to keep

sweet civil peace (a steep

ascension to the morning light).

The message of the good grey elephant

is like an invitation,

then – to taste Creation

as a gift of vine & wheat... sent

from grey clouds like rain, or as

a green palm spokes its wheel

with light.  Let it reveal

itself – ultramarine, topaz,

gold, diamond.  In articulate shade

of elephant fig tree

cresting azure Sydney,

reckon the pattern starlight made –

an octahedral Southern Cross

lifts through your heart

transporting human light

to everlasting dwelling-place.

6.22.17

cottonwood sky

BIG DIVE

In the steep ravine shading the river

Hobo’s eyes follow

smooth limbs upward, so –

into a cloud of silver-green shimmer,

Columbian sky-nest

of cottonwoods.  His squint

moseys like scattered flint –

mishmash out of Ocean states

into some kind of Land o’ Lakes

matryoshka doll, or Land 

o’ Goshen Big Rock Candy

Mountain.  The poet is a sacred

fool (or cataleptic converter)

& every shepherd’s an

effete abomination,

just a bump under a bumpkin tower.

Hobo keeps an eye on Henry,

ambling up there

on River Road.  Air-

head royale, full of acorn honey,

soldering his Goshen stone

into a manic-hollered

coat of caustic red

Rhode Island rooster-throne –

a sharpened archaic Goshen point

left at Minnehaha

Falls by some Ojibwa

dream-boat.  The time is out of joint

                *

he cries, with a Norwegian accent –

O Jessie, O Ophelia,

my little tree, Columbia!

Come tripping back unto the oak tent

once again, out of the Ocean foam!

Flip your big dive, big Dove,

into reverse – for love

of Yahweh, & of Manitou, & home

sweet home!  An infinite Intelligence

invisible as air,

kind as mon cher

Francesco, wise as Providence,

clear as the sky vaulting these gray

heart-leaves – our octave,

Henry, Hobo... wave

on wave, on wave (lithe sun-ray).

From the standpoint of ineffable Person –

an infinite free Spirit

(older than Cautantowwit,

with all his Raven-wit) – a Someone

omnipresent, serving restoration

to a hurt creation – mercy

exudes like oak-tree honey-

gall.  Some smiling heart-shaped cotton-

wooden crossroad Livingstone –

green-gowned Sophia

traipsing Milky Way-a

Sarabande (one, two, three... one).

6.12.17 

it's not the actual statue

COTTONWOOD FLUFF

The poem curls out of the soil

of speech, an idiom

of natural freedom –

not the symbolic Rose (Étoile

du Nord) but the actual rambling

pink thorn-petals

pendulous stained glass

welds to parallactic lightning

(baptism of liquid fire).  These two,

the symbol & the thing

itself, twirl interlacing

through the June weather – like Hobo

& actual Providence, the scrappy

burg Rog Williams named.

Free habitation, framed

by metaphysical hope; happy

locution for Rhodos-location.  Only

an Ocean state of mind,

maybe – where you might find

your inner JFK, sailing toward Galilee;

only a craggy Catholic Oak

whose simple fortitude

cools tempers rude, &

opened ears when Blackstone spoke –

lifting his anima naturaliter christiana

to chant that common law

inheres in English & Ojibwa –

sponge of manna-Minnehaha

                *

drifting like green Columbia

or cottonwood fluff –

adhesive, light enough

for grave thread-whispers (ahh...

I understand).  Radiant Naiad

à New York, lifting her torch

for Liberté... hopscotch

of bare feet round hummingbird

maze-vat... such were smoke signals

for a wide corn-dance –

pregnant sum-trance

of orbic humankind, out of deep wells

(perennial realtà).  It’s not the actual

statue, the actual state

but what they indicate

(A-frame of Lincoln-log) – rational

celebrations of Memorial Days...

Thanksgivings (4th

of July an afterthought

of fireflies)... myriad ways

a Union of republican consent

gathers (in common sense,

civility) at the tense

apex of divine intent –

buffalo tepee of Providence,

Manitou table

of justice; peaceable

kingdom, benevolent, immense.

6.7.17

your whiskey mule

IRIS-ARCH

The bulb in a wild Chinese lantern

is a bright orange berry,

edible, tart (very).

Little octagon amid the fern-

pine forest, summer Halloween

memento mori; lamp

in Thanksgiving pumpkin,

blood-orange earring for a queen.

My cedar gazebo in the rain

magnifies your painted

facets.  I’m your slanted

saint, beaming gray Bretagne

matière, like old Guillaume d’Orange

in his gelato-cool

Gellone prayer cell –

the armored ape (‘tis passing strange)

grown peaceable & rocky-mild.

Repentant berry-man

in shady homespun

camouflage (as orange span stilled

leaping crag to crag – a frisky

beggar-stag in Frisco

Bay).  My Lady, O

high-hearted votary!  Your whiskey

mule I’ll be – show stigmatized

tattoos you needled through

cliff-jagged river-scars to

radiant Pacific blue... baptized

                *

in Minnehaha Falls – by Manitou!

Her figurehead (surmised

miraculous surprise)

bobs like green fiddlehead, unfurling You!

Blue-green pine haze of Tian Shan,

whose snow-cone peaks

harbor bright lightning streaks

& pure transparency of oxygen...

be like her molten meteoric smile

my natal cog upon

whose wheel of rose spun

hurtling through light’s peristyle

into galactic congregations

sharing pain et vin –

Melchizedek’s Come in,

my wounded daughters – prodigal sons!

The berry, man, the berry lives,

though crypted in the cradle

of an origami grail –

sun of Manitou, sum of beehives!

That copper moss-green Lady

in the harbor lifts her torch

as an intelligible iris-arch,

so read the sign : her rainy-shady

smoke-signal, pine-scented candle

of a little tree – her fiery

omnipresent Amor, mirrory

agate Agape, all blumen (mandel).

5.17.17