ancient West Branch watercolor

CURVE PRONGS

Everything gets more simple

in old age.  Trust me.

Thanksgiving pumpkin pi =

two stone pillars, plus an ample

roof.  Henry Mewl, hee-hawing

NNW (out of Apuleius)

checkmates template Isis 

planted in West Branch (settling

in river-bronze).  Like that watercolor

Mary Negus limned

in high school – skimmed

from unlocked memory (her

Grant Wood brain, a dusty library).

The curve prongs back to earth

west of St. Lou. – Ft. Worth.

Van Cliburn Plumbs to Victory.

I was walking up from the Mississippi

this afternoon, & met

(in Voronezh sunlight)

an ancient babushka, smiling at me.

Thinking of Nadezhda, & of hope...

of Mary Magdalen,

who witnessed Russian

irony in the garden (roped-

off Gesthem – Tsarskoe Selo).

The dream song blinks

until your lighthouse winks.

Wry rosy Providence (all systems go).

1.11.19

that river road to Memphis

CLEAR LIGHT

Again the baby crocuses

peek from the clay.

Blue as those starfish Mary

Ravlin molded, bright as seahorses.

The cottonwoods lean by the river,

hearkening to milder

time.  Spring child, your

mother flows to Memphis, where

one milky King came to his end

willing to walk that road –

real prophecy, he said.

Against our triple-headed fiend

(entrenchèd greed, malice & war)

to shape his earthy will

to one kiln-fired good Will

& forge a worldwide fellowship – soar,

mighty Martin, to that eagle’s lair!

Let your green trumpet sound

until a safety net is bound

with international orange there –

strong as titanic span & pillar

soft as a catenary

wing   shadowing gray

Ocean   in the sky’s wide azure

where twin doves from Mexico

open their double doors

hid among cedars

on a high hill   where monarchs go

                 *

so blinding sunshine grant us   second

sight   when we gaze upward

& behold   lenticular cloud

of mauve & rose   afloat   profound

over the wheeling ground   & fold

ourselves into that solid air

relinquish pride & fear

for spring’s renewal   as of old

your web of mutuality

yokes unknown soldiers trudging

to the Somme   frauds pledging

sacrifice   for unreality

just as they had in Vietnam

your solitary   freedom

walk   into Jerusalem

tattooed with beatific stigma   I am

coming like a thief, he said

so keep awake   the day

draws nigh   one April   Day

of Jubilee   when   rising from the dead

we’ll be that crocus   Kingdom Come

a long time coming   freedom

train   of joy & wisdom

supernatural glee   from heaven   home

to Earth   again   soul liberty

as promised in the whisper-

cave   of Galilee   your

clear light   ever-afloat   Eternity

4.4.17

My mother & the Longfellows

Just an afterthought to previous post : I share a bit of family lore regarding the Longfellows.

The poet Henry W. Longfellow was no stranger to sorrow and tragedy.  His line "into each life some rain must fall" is an understatement in his case (he was widowed twice; his first wife Mary died after a miscarriage; his second, Frances, after burns suffered in a freak accident).

Longfellow was endeared to his six children; his old classic The Children's Hour christens one of them "laughing Allegra".

Allegra eventually married and had children of her own.  One of her daughters married a doctor from Texas, and they settled in a house on the River Road, in Minneapolis, next door to my grandparents - where my mother Mary Ravlin grew up, with her brother and sisters.  My mother became friends with their children (Allegra's grandchildren).  She relates the story that once, when Allegra was visiting her family in Minneapolis, their furnace backed up and filled the house with smoke.  The Longfellows migrated next door until the problem was fixed and the house aired out; Allegra spent the night at my grandparents'.

A few years later, the Longfellows invited my mother (who was about 12 at the time) to accompany them on a vacation to Maine.  They took the train from Minneapolis, and eventually reached the Longfellow home in Portland (now a museum).  There the Longfellows brought out some little glasses of sherry, and my mother had her first taste of alcohol - which she took with great trepidation, since both her parents were absolute Iowa teetotalers.

The Longfellow House (Portland, Maine)

The other Henry

Driving home to Providence tomorrow.  The route (Providence-CT-NY-NJ-Mercer, PA-Elkhart, IN-Chicago-Wisconsin-Minneapolis, and flip/reverse) takes about two and a half days.  U.S. 80 etch-a-sketched on my brain, as by a no.2 lead pencil.  I've seen the heartland, from winter to summer - busy old world of pasture, trucks, silos.  Roadsigns.  Burning machines, fleeting memory, archaic billboards.  Sunny green slopes & wide, sly streams.  Beef jerky.  Construction fellas from Tennessee & Missouri, families back home, playing beanbag in the motel parking lot night after night (beer & barbecue).

The little witches' hat of the water tank on Tower Hill (only high point in the metro area).  Conical green cap peeking up in the exiled distance from my mother's balcony (steadfast old Southeast lady, shipped to the old folks' home over in St. Paul).

These past 9-12 months, very rattling for me.  Change in the air.  I retire from ye olde library at Brown, I go back home to help my Dad in the throes of dying, & deviously the life he's made is snarled, inwoven again with the so-called life I made.  This is going home, I guess.  I'm reading The Education of Henry Adams in my off-time.  Watching the early swallows from my mother's strange new balcony, I think : Henry could have been a poet, if he'd listened more carefully.

The Big River, with its screech of pileated woodpecker, & ghost of Berryman, is listening.

I mean Henry Adams, the other Henry.  A sort of translucent mind & heart, plangent & sad.  He never did get it.  It wasn't up to him.  (I mean that other Henry.)

I, me, this Henry, will get back to poetry, though.  I've made a vow on my father's strong handshake (as I quote Ecclesiastes in the obit : "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your strength.")  My father was a mighty man, a righteous man.  My mother has a fine hand too (artist, through & through).

I have this sense that America doesn't quite understand itself or its own poetry yet.  Poetry is a spiritual discipline, a trial by fire.  That lead pencil pressed down by the 2-yr-old - that US 80 with the green-gray "Venus Wins All" down the margins - is an ash-trail of a blue-bright flame (world-shaping metamorph).

Long & winding Rhode

Serendipity... I have a postcard from James Merrill, who was a friend of my Uncle Jim (Ravlin). Jim was my mother's older brother (by 15 yrs). My mother (Mary Ravlin Gould) was a childhood friend of the granddaughter of Longfellow (the daughter of "laughing Allegra"). (My mother had her first drink - sherry - in the Longfellow home in Portland ME, when she was 13.) In the late 1990s I wrote a book-length poem called "Stubborn Grew", the plot of which turned on the fate of Jim Ravlin's daughter, Juliet Ravlin (my cousin). It was published in 2000, at Tod Thilleman's invitation, by Spuyten Duyvil Press. Tod wrote to me that my long poem reminded him more than anything of James Merrill (a poet I have in large part avoided reading).