sketchy star-map

GREEN PYRAMID

The idea of Janus.  Osip is born;

war saw.  The tiny hexagons,

whose bite is bitterness

& valediction, zigzag down

here, in our Cerealian Capital

(Pillsbury, General Mills).

Grandpa, in Saskatchewan

wills grain elevators toward the pole.

Above these winter clouds, invisible

Venus the flower-star

describes tobacco-petal arcs –

Gravesend’s Dark Lady – indelible

cartwheeling Corn Maiden – springing

& sovereign rite of way;

dewy washerwoman, our MVP

lifting the horizon over D.C. (washing

everything).  Verily... except a corn of wheat

fall into the ground & die...

Over the green pyramid, an eye;

red rose for Memorial Day (complete

now, finished).  Elvira, out of Ravlin

opera, spins toward blue clay

herself.  We go that way

with snowflakes, with January’s frozen

squeaky violin... we go together.

At our reed-muddy center

she alights on the perimeter –

Adonai cornucopia, our milky tether.

1.15.20

from David Ovason, The Secret Architecture of the Nation's Capital, p.190

compact Mayflower

ACCORD-HARMONIUM

Memorial Day.  The little flags

for birthday boys.  A vast

lime hillside park, just

north of Harriet.  My scraps & rags

of memory.  Twilight apartment

in the 50‘s (60 years

ago).  Mahogany.  Grandpa’s

brass shell from France.  The scent

of pipe tobacco.  Suntanned print

of Washington & Lafayette

skipping a minuet

après la Revolution... ancient

icons of a Constitution, hereby

animated (in the flesh).

How to start fresh?

For the remembrance of me...

for 1st Minnesota, Cemetery

Ridge (clumped there

after the last full measure).

Play with your toy soldiers, Henry.

Hawk-wrought republican scriptures

underwritten by compact

Mayflower... covenant

of friendly fellowship (yours,

mine, ours).  Underscored in turn

for soft flute melody

out of forgotten Gypsy

music-box, deep August forest (yearn

                *

for startled stars, green, coppery).

The absinthe reminiscence

of a Peto (Still Decades).

Time’s overrated.  It’s your history

that’s in your making, Liberty.

Out of Itasca spring

a major serpent thing

treads sinuous Welsh-knotty

tanglements, under lightweight bridge

(it’s only gravity) –

your shadow-play, Psyche,

Eurydice.  Reunion.  To the edge

of black-&-yellow double-eagle

eggshell canoe (viceroy

cocoon?) from stony

Petrograd (oscillate, seagull).

Black-orange monarch of your soul.

This little mustard seed

of pilgrimage (Venerable Bead

or Columbaa) will ravel up the whole

into an Okie safety catch of swinging

carousels – Francesca

slanting out of Rimini

(doggèd by Pound) is bringing

Beatrice in her wake – a hurricane

accord-harmonium,

an oriole some-hum bonum

renewing memories (Van Windowpane).

5.26.17

6-way pearlosphere

SHADY GROVE

Water & limestone, flowing water

& flint.  One flinty poet.

Raven (Cautantowwit)

bent southwest... shady potter

evening the light patter

into one plate

(a starfish template).

Love knit into the gray matter –

after Apollo’s leaf-shaken by Laura

& Guillaume flutes his

last letter to Texas

(chère Annie della Santa Povera).

Orpheus mining for Eurydice

or Hobo for a spare soul

bear witness to the whole

arcade of an elliptical theodicy –

the love that filters through the frame

of selfishness, into the wheel

of goodness nonpareil –

along a zigzag trail (from shame

to limpid sunshine, fear to hope).

This labyrinth of green

copper, spring’s has-been

graven into will-be – mighty trope

of Lincoln profile, lifting from

rust-brown decades

(gilded cage, parades...)

– an infinitesimal infant hum

              *

like flute-call of a one-stringed

gusle, or trompette

marine – sweet lure set

looping gracefully from stringent

steel twin pillars – fleet trimaster

launched on azure wave-

arc from the knave-

matrix of simian disaster –

Noah’s rhombus of acacia,

world-gathering lantern-

ship of ringèd Saturn

bowed with figurehead (Columbia)

of grey rain   hummin being

or bee hummin   human

              *

bird   shade   Galilean

Nazir   nightingale   circling

like adamant flint iamond

or polyalmond eye

within the 6-way

pearlosphere   Warlpiri-monde

or center of Center, N.D.

where Black Elk springs

his sundance rings

of omnipresent dove-activity

so dive in   dive to the divine

drive-in   twine-chariot

of agate Agape   knot-

spun to lift   into ascension-heaven

              *

Franklin Bridge repair is almost done.

The river flows midéwé way

toward Memorial Day.

We spiral back where we’ve begun.

That granite portal of an Ocean State

where Roger steps from his

canoe – old Prospect Terrace,

over Providence – rêve-songs originate

there, looking west (toward St. Louis

& Frisco).  Late May

brings Rhody Statehood Day,

centenary of JFK (his Newport, ours) –

& in Paris (1913) Apollinaire

beheld the Rite of Spring

before Great War (engulfing

Earth in violence... pity... despair).

A tiny hummingbird speeds blossomward.

Grey sound-waves buzz

like microscopic doves

or bees around oak honey-hoard.

They’re everywhere.  The hollow tock

of woodpecker foretells

a carillon (death-knells,

birth-pangs) – oak droning, Knock.

It shall be opened.  The shady grove

teems into restoration.

Cup-bearing dome-creation.

Wine-stained Milky Way (Manitou-trove).

5.25.17

My open road (happy b-day, Walt)

WHEEL-ROSE

Memorial Day.  A good man’s ashes

hid in stone by-way,

two steps from coppery

Minnehaha.  Her long eyelashes

(Florence) his.  Only a mile or so

from viridian jungles

of springtime (Mendelssohn).

His father (Edward) fended the blow

at Saint-Mihiel.  & Katherine,

from Reading – with a red

peony, under a shed

in Belgium.  Only 29.

Red Cross volunteer (unselfish 

clear-eyed gaze).  Poppies

in a man-made sea

of miseries.  The human wish

for Providence is octahedral

diamond.  My open road

is riven motherlode,

adhesive gossamer.  Vein-trail

of cottonwoods, bent by the wind –

a flexible thread of silver-

green, a gusty poplar

grove.  Slight syllables will bind

this dream-sail to a Temeraire

leaving Galilee harbor

(bound for Superior

beneath the wheel-rose of the Bear).

5.31.16

River trail (with cottonwood fluff)

Read-Along-with Rest Note, poem #7 :

7.1 : "May day, memorious..." - echoes opening of poem #1. Date of composition is Memorial Day. "the old soldier" - we're back with Teddy Roosevelt, making his Bull Moose comeback attempt with a big speech in Madison Square Garden. He had just survived an assassination attempt in the midwest a day or so before, and was walking around with the bullet still in his chest.

7.2 : "rich men..." etc. Some vocabulary from Richard II, another politician on his way out.

7.3 : "Stern was the sterling word..." etc. - public rhetoric, political rhetoric, takes on a tincture from the Iron Age (the world of power and violence) which it addresses.

7.4 : "oak tree... bantering manteau" - out hidden in the country, beyond sequestered rural wealth, a tree furls (hides) in a cloak of whispering leaves. Image of reserved, persistent presence of poetic speech, powerful in its sphere, yet distinguished from political rhetoric per se. May 29, the date of composition, is Oak Tree Day in England, or Restoration Day : a celebration of the young Charles II's successful escape (hiding in an oak tree) from the roundheads. May 29 was Charles 2nd's birthday - also this poet's birthday. Contrast of Charles II (strong successful monarch) with Richard II (weak falling monarch).

7.5 : poetry is both "sheltering" and a kind of riposte ("ripe post") to political conflict. "The octave..." etc. - the poetic word discovers the sameness or harmony or equality hidden beneath class differences ("squire" and "hand"). "rest note" - in musical terms, a rest note is a silent note : a pause between sounds.

7.6 : "young seal" - cf. previous comments on the "seal" motif.

7.7 : "speechless limbs" - the silent-speaking tree, the "seal" which speaks only silently or symbolically (as animal or as image). Yet the "retort" is a gesture, part of a real test, game, agon. The contest originates in the "racing heart" itself.

Today's helpful hint re previous post : this is Memorial Day in USA; Oak Tree Day or Restoration Day in UK; Rhode Island Statehood Day; (& my b-day).