UNFOLDING SHEEP
So the double wheels of the Venn diagram
(a kind of astigmatism from
from Ravenna to home)
mesh in a translated spacetime –
East to West become Rome-Byzantium
Greek to Italian Catholic
Orthodox – majestic
Chartres to homespun NOLA Notre Dame.
I’m working on a bridge, sez Hobo.
Under that nature morte
(Peto, Brown Decades) – what
the flower of liberty became... oh no.
The lilies on the funeral train
(Gould was an engineer).
Abe Lincoln’s here –
great Julius Caesar’s ghastly coin
(one lethal copper penny).
The wheel slowly revolves.
Agony gradually resolves.
The quiet sepulcher (Gesthemane)
became a bargaining chip at the Crusades.
What molts the World-Ruler
from Ides of March to your
sweat-April soul-showers (the blade’s
Excalibur) is some indomitable eagle-
heart – bald as the snowfields
north of International Falls,
wide as the river south of Angola.
*
You mark the justice of the refugee,
the accurate perception
of the slave. Moses-pontoon
or old Italian canoe... it’s simply
the humble carpenter’s sharp eye
encapsulated in a bead
of honey (life’s high meed) –
gold oval of air, its quiddity.
Like throne of Isis in West Branch,
or Grant Wood making space
for Herbie Hoover’s birthplace –
like May Goulding at her Negus launch
(a cup of ceremony from deep
Ethiopia) for Henry Flower –
blooming nom-de-plume, your
lambent, flammable, unfolding sheep.
Rhode Island waits for you,
Son of the Evening Star;
little acorn-czar,
your birthday rhymes with Manitou –
palladium of shimmering mosaic
merging with river-clay
to meet Oak-Apple Day
for restoration (JFK). A wake, awake!
It’s Rooster Henry, dusting off
the grave. It’s everyone
thinking the train’s long gone –
finding an acorn in a hollow trough.
3.3.19
