perhaps we are Hagia Sophia

JAPANESE NOTE

Down by Mirror Lakes, in Mendelssohn

Henry collects the silver

trading cards of a younger

self.  Still innocent (the future Hobo-man).

In that Providence springtime,

when we were setting out.

Pure Japanese note

of your own childhood (high chime

of Tokyo folksong).  Your Florentine

round pallor, papery

sheepglow (Butterfly).

Who knew I’d be the priggish Pinkerton

of Rensselaerville epithalamia?

Til that blindfolded boy

waving a Yankee flag (say,

can you see?) – sows stony drama...

Puccini’s on the turntable, at Amiata.

Her spectral Iris-wings

loft LIBERTY (to thee we sing)

unto this microcosm of liublyu stigmata.

Yet, perhaps... we are Hagia Sophia

with a million eyes.

The crucifixion of surprise

curves down, humbled with apatheia

– still time, still time, to turn

from the spent spirit

to that glad esprit

reflecting oui (edging Ravenna urn).

11.18.19

a thing a thane might ship

MUDDY WINDVANE

The muted pleading of the cottonwoods

meshed in a counterpoint

with myriad redundant

autumn leaves (Chet Baker, Miles).

Sorrow & joy, sickness & health

in a subtle weave of shocks

& echoes (mental blocks

were mystic chords once, Keith).

Beneath your penumbra, Alighieri –

a shadow pantomime.

Fleeting Ravenna rhyme

(Julie on the swing set, Henry

sailing from the limb, laughing).

The logic of your enigmatic

kerygma, then, epileptic

showman?  Merely a line curving

across historical time, into the light

emanating from your heart,

Galilean nazir-sport –

over a chessboard made of night

& day, an abba-rhyme pattern

(pax-bellum-pax, or king-

usurpavenger-prince... a thing

a thane might ship, a Grecian urn).

Bent overlords still shadowbox

musical echoes in refrain.

Mendelssohn leaf-rain

leads me back to Mirror Lakes

                   *

– twin lakes, twin mirrors (eyes

of Oedipus, Antigone) –

Twin Cities ceremony

curing the incest-curse (of Paradise).

You cannot have a child of gods

& men.  Like an albino

freak, or Minotaur

the twin will upset planting periods

& hunting prayers.  The High Priest

tears his robe.  He

says he is the One – he,

he!  Messiah-singularity (least

shall be greatest, last first).  Huh?

Henry earn him tragedy –

dumb spiral out of clay

turn muddy windvane of Columbia.

All about people you know, poetry.

Little Rhody, see –

Rog Williams, Tommy

Gould (Annie Hutchinson too, sadly) –

plumb from Sir Edward Coke

into self-government

by way of Charlie Second

(seedling restoration, kingdom oak)...

til little Providence become

a way of life (like yesterday)

& you reckon the penumbra

yon Lady of the Harbor harbors (hum)

10.28.19

in the end zone

MAJOR CHORDS

In the shadow of a song of songs

the anthems are always major

chords.  Mendelssohn... (our

home in Hopkins)... everyone belongs.

Tonight the rival city-states,

the patriots, blow

ram’s horns.  O

say can you see... big potentates’

eyes dilate... Vergo rolls out

Hail Mary feint (over

Washington Monument) –

Crazy Horse Rushmore... Touch-

stone!  The transfixated crowd

explodes.  Ghost dance

in the end-zone – Lance

Galahad will take the shroud!

The mob desires to crown a king,

a king of everything.

Sponsors oblige, with bling –

the glittering circlet is a diamond ring

for nubile Woody Berge Ouvrante

(Cheerleader from the Bronx

Will Marry Uncle Onx

Next Year).  Preview this fête galante!

Apollinaire heard the cicadas

droning in the oak –

of how the wind spoke

dry coracles of wheat to Colchis

                    *

& the streetlight in the snowy dark

zones a frozen cross

against the pavement (Loss

for Brady : Bells Will Boom for Belichick).

We’ll laugh about this tomorrow

(or maybe in 2020).

How the crowd, honey,

decides – & doesn’t care, somehow.

They insist on sacrifice – Sacre

du Printemps, ma chérie.

Tiptoe to thundery

finale... just before the war (nacre

& objets d’art, Guillaume).

Leap to the metronome

over the Metrodome,

Sophie – you will survive this doom

of frightened infants in their uniforms;

Thin Blade Societies

& Rudra puberty

sodalities... unconscious norms

(they know not what they do).  Thread

woven for a future prince –

hearts, purple sequins

imprint Valentine wreath for his head;

he’s singing of an anti-kingdom

where his anti-father

(shedding all that bother)

chords an unquenchable welcome home.

2.3.19

unbreakable chords

HUMAN ECHO

Your nostalgia for the aristocracy

of childhood, Vladimir,

I understand.  So here :

infantile tyrants bear it away

in sappy cerements of innocence.

Galla & her golden boy

& their brief beehive day

drowse in Ravenna, under silence

of mosaic stars; Dante too

sleeps there, still far

from his Firenze mère –

the milky galaxy of midnight blue,

his babble-realm of splendor-joy.

A fluent melody

pours endlessly

from thine ineffable benevolence, Blue J;

a spiral at the cave entrance,

an everlasting sign

of all Creation

(ceaseless, calm, majestic dance).

Those unbreakable chords of Mendelssohn

at the end of the trolley line;

the sound of the violin

lesson, the neighborhood of children...

& the shadow of the Thunderbird

in the immense oak tree

the dark green sanctuary

of Morning Star   dolphin-shepherd

                     *

out of deep-twined memory

by the cistern heard

rose-enfolded Word

out of Ocean’s fond   Jonah-infinity

Instinctive fright becomes aggression,

dominance abets revenge;

since long before Stonehenge

each weak scapegoat endures oppression

& the tantrum of the infant

replicated by depression

each political occasion

filters through both mob & tyrant.

But it shall not be so with thee.

I have no wrath, the Ghost

murmurs; I am the Most

High Heartbeat, mild Invisibility –

indivisible reply

out of the crystalline

& quintessential Union

at the source of Earth & Sky.

I am your human echo, come to be

among you, in my realm

of love, mercy, wisdom –

I am the Nazir, chanting out of Galilee.

& then I saw her, Jonah-Shadow –

wings extending over all

of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Ghost-heart we feel, ghost-bird we know.

7.18.18

yodeling in Mendelssohn

LITTLE MIRROR

The mind is like a little mirror

& the word is like

a mirror in that lake.

We skated there, one ancient year –

across the icy glass, Heidi.

In Mendelssohn, sweet

neighborhood (complete

Garden of Cyrus now, in memory).

A melody of day-lilies cheers Henry

Hobo (by the Mississippi).

He might be somebody

you know – booked into penitentiary?

Sol.  Solo.  Absent Sheba

browses in another aisle

(archived in old Rhode Isle).

Her ship’s in search of Colchia

lambswool – seamless gold web,

mute mutuality –

griot reality

lofted to laughter (on Mount Horeb).

Square triangles of pyramids

fit into portable log

cabin logarithms, Mag.

Your stone’s a tiny tablet, hid

beside that lake, in Galilee –

a solidarity

sodality, a party

writ on water.  Fountain, artistry.

6.27.18

Philadephia harbor

SHADE TREE

Stewart’s old print of Philadelphia harbor

(1821).  The great shade tree

by the shore, so peacefully

imposing.  What’s America for?

The benign bonheur, hovering over

our intricate pursuits

of same.  The one who loots

forcefields of dominance, mon frère,

may never find this canopy

of feathery leaf-

grace, hopeful belief...

for we the people brook no satrapy –

relentless justice of the golden rule

the frame of human dignity;

law’s equilibrium of equity

our guarantee of commonweal.

My own boat pilots back to Mendelssohn

so slowly, through such vast

flat riverlands.  Her mast

a pine tree split from almond Someone –

cloudy shadow of a smile (O shady oak).

Your heavy clay, Coatlicue –

the chilly violence you

still portray – fired to a silver spoke

as fine as spiderweb, becomes a sign.

Your limestone epitaph –

a serpentine & fractal staff

fractured for us, broken for bread & wine.

5.17.18

leaves of the cottonwood

ERMINE ROBE

The leaves of the cottonwood are silver-green,

the river flows green-bronze.

That old green man’s

gone home to his fathers now.  He’s left the scene.

Hobo will join him, by & by.

Leaves only a memory.

Childhood in Mendelssohn, Heidi...

where we drew the plow from the slough of Bye.

Home is the place we’re hailing from

forever & ever, to infinite

space – echo of minute

alien birds, mingling in one b-flat hum.

& home is familiar Elsinore

where haunted Prince Hamlet

spins the wheel – to forfeit

Ophelia, at heart’s grim core.

Time is inexorable, yet life

is sweet.  Violets fade

while a slow parade

carries the king to the tomb of his wife

down the path of a labyrinth

dark gold & green.

Where a trompette marine

strings one tone (teal-absinthe)

Ariadne hums too, as she spins

the silk safety net

round orange parapet

knotting a quipu where Time begins

                *

& Hobo apprends l’alphabet

blu.  He’s buried in summer

like acorn mummer,

coddled in hay, enfant Hamlet –

like Ionas from London (graybeard

or grey bird) cross-

dressed for her Highness

to pluck from the crowd, to be cured

(so they heard).  She’s singing there yet.

In a grey ermine robe

in the heart of the Globe

her voice, claire-voie, will penetrate

your ear.  O incommensurate

ineffable Spirit

one with your Incarnate

One, who sent Me as advocate

to make a waltzing Tree of Love

out of the union of

the twain!  Clay molten Dove

from Kiln-no-Day, soaring above

sky-wells of Ocean Stream, I AM

your mandorla of light

& joy – your mirror-bright

bee’s honey-eye – multiocular OM

circumferencing the whisper-dome

breathing Hagia Sophia

through most-human sigh

urging love’s coracle to kingdom come.

5.19.17

meet & join

personal compass of Roger Williams

FAMILIAR ALMOND

My snarling yarn snowballs thistle-

clumps of confusion into

the midmost of the Slough.

Incomprehensible green missile,

towing kisses from that acrid swamp

in Mendelssohn (whence

we dragged a canoe by bare

feat, Heidi, home – only to dump

it in the permafrost garage).

There are many jinxed

men buried in there, minx.

Path P was a chi-rho camouflage –

X murks the spit (twin cousins

rustling for windy blessings).

Oaky, salty Invernessings

hone your eye into a baker’s dozen –

thirstings between gold floor-leavened

loafers & a 14

April funeral (foreseen

but not seen-for).  The scene’s unheavened.

Then for heaven’s sakes, let’s have it,

Lucky.  Twelve’s the number

of twin seraphim (Mary

& John) & Jenny’s lost mint (Juliet)

– the mother rising in the leery

graviton – the hamlet

feeling mighty chary yet

(Blackstone on hold, with Roger steering

                     *

spins his compass toward the iron clearing).

West, Virginia, west

to Vermilion... yon felix

nest.  Gone dragnet spearing.

& yet the guyline mumbling

of poetry retrieves

a sense of limpid leaves;

the universal shuttling

of loom with lambent seraphim

conceives an agate diamond-

crystalloid familiar almond –

6 paths of Dakota Slim

remind the mind of Eagle-Heart

(who reigns by thundercloud

of humble Jonah-bird

O sages in the Super Mart)

that everything says meet & join

in lattices of give

& take   Seek ye   & Live,

that honey-dome   of stubborn pain

intones   my cousin Juliet

great-grandmother Jessie

Ophelia   madre de Jenny

listen   a gentleness, O jet

of Mississippi water   sip & see

the ghosts come back to me

in Paradise   a little tree

of Jesse   blue   (a juniper, maybe)

4.12.17

sleek as raven-eel

LICHEN DOME

The last snow before Easter.

Sophie’s footprints etch

a squarish spiral sketch...

still photo (lento, Bruegelish faster).

From long distance, every

bird’s-eye view can fuse

with every other (sans

confusion).  Each waltzing orrery

links hands in Sydney – under those figs

whose natural majesty

anchors her panoply,

a fractal Dr. Octahydra (sky-digs

of Southern Cross, O dusky lady).

Bends toward akme

of the starfish now, Henry.

Meteor Hurtle Aboriginal Day.

The stone fell (odd fellow, ultramarine).

Fey otter – furry,

sleek as raven-eel –

into the gilded net of Saarinen

(Sibelius?  Some other fin).

Architrave swept (over

canoe).  Windhoover,

agile Harry Grizzly (buoy-woman,

boo-hoo – smoking Camel,

him calumet).  A Caliban

or Cain (Abel).  A Son

of Man – sad Prospero (blithe Ariel

                  *

is in the pine).  Where be the porpoise

here, Dauphin?  Your plow

scratches the surface now.

Her keen lengthens toward Paradise

(swell memory of Outremer).

The palm-lines slacken,

ease... shade thickens then

toward Wingy Rock (you know where,

Coatlicue).  The cedar forest

where the monarch dies,

lives.  Memorize

my speech, for its spooky taste

of dead bees (Finnish sacrifice).

There’s the arch, like

a prow (turn on the mike

now).  Spin the jenny, throw the dice.

Snow mantles the martyr’s tomb.

Green lichen dome

where breakers foam

from galaxies of Mendelssohn (home

run).  I don’t know where to go

from here.  The scared poem

swims down Rio del Hum

until your blues become a hollow

rhumba-Rome (flight-bud unknown).

Whispers vespers... purrs.

Her bop-team be yours,

egg-woman (inner-tube pontoon).

4.11.17

its talons are for real

RAPTOR-SEAL

We moved through a smog thicker than coal-dust

filled with angry cries.

I couldn’t recognize

my guide, only her humming through a gust

of wind.  The moon was a copper disk

printed faintly rust-green

over that desolation –

like a hovering fingerprint, a mask

for Queequeg, Abraham – a penny

for Liberty, glinting

from the dark well (hinting

freedom, good will, where there wasn’t any).

A doubloon for Mammon flickered so

below shrouds of the Pequod –

many an aching tattoo would

echo in blood that talent for woe.

Marine Corps taps (trompette marine).

Memory shapes emblems

like coral wreaths... drums

weave light fleece mandala, copper green

& gold.  Like an iron spring wound

taut into infinity,

one Mendelssohn memory

emerges from my swampy ground –

the ancient plow we found, Heidi

& dragged back home together

through April weather

(iris blooming like a peacock’s eye

                    *

out of dead bulbs that never die).

The tarnished metallurgy

Iron Age surgery

some Raven-shaman shall (with high

& fluting Light Warlpiri) bring

might lift our eyes again

to one galactic common

wheel, that voices in Ark-Argo sing –

Hagia Sophias in Yezidi throng

to harmonize their peacock

tongues, & nations flock

to chime each footnote of a brazen gong.

The Word flies backward so, before Babel.

Its talons (like a raptor-

seal of olive-arrows) are

for real – to carry us from Hell

to Paradise, fledged by free will;

its almond eye (above

the pyramid) is Love –

forever fair & kind & true, until

the splendor of infant Creation

shines like Sacajawea

from green Equadoria –

justice & liberty combine

in meek Franciscan poverty

to weld the planetary

flora into Primavera

sunlight-gold... bright solidarity.

3.21.17 

Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 3.21.17

then you shall have some pie

PIE SQUARED

Down by the Rio del Espiritu

Santo, the sun ignites

the pileated woodpecker’s

red-feathered crown.  The sky is blue,

the river flows, a serpentine

spark-shimmer, bending

rainbows to the engulfing

sea.  Dido’s shade will lean

forever toward the perimetric

oxhide rim of Carthage,

choking on her rage

with tears.  Dante’s epileptic

yearning for supernal Grace

paces her transcendental

number round a circle

of circles – like Angela Mace

Christian, or a greyhound, hunting

down that palimpsest

of muffled tracks (geist-

hand behind the arras bunting)

to find F. Mendelssohn at last –

well-tuned, unlucky sister

polishing her Easter

song (spliced to her brother’s mast).

& as my poem’s radius inches

toward her hemisphere,

its eigenvalues (fear

& hope) rhyme where it pinches

                     *

here in Mendelssohn, where children

in the shade of worlds

their parents made, unfold

a bruised & tender leaf-pattern.

The family circle is a dented

sphere.  Your twin cousin

became a ghost – the other one

a cryptic cosine (marginal)... prevented

on path P to blossoming, somehow

(obliquity of bad faith,

lack-love).  Now each wraith

in Dante’s bowl of wrath & woe

will step into your Mirror Lake

as into Galilee,

so you might slowly see

circumference of eternity – & make

amends.  Dido weeps by cave-door.

Moses goes home free,

his daughters over Lethe

summoned, as in play (Cleo,

Ophelia, Jessie...) by paddle-wheeler

quick, now, here, gone

like a Mississippian –

irrational Thanksgiving number

Guillem d’Orange (not neon, now,

but international,

beneath his Provençal

shade-grove) beheld – her wavy prow.

3.14.17

the whole sweet Seine will glow

TINY BULB

A ghost of snow hung in the air

like glittering smoke.

Dusted from a hemlock

by a twirling jay – like nothing there.

Harsh cold rain goes crystalline,

shines in white waves

of domes (over sea-caves,

graves of grass).  Adamantine

turtleshell or judgement seat

of green sea-swell

beyond heaven & hell...

only a murmur makes complete

your copper frame, chère Liberty.

Emerald cicada husked

in tamaracks, at dusk –

vesture & camouflage for thee,

O soul set free!  Out of the spiral

gloom of time you come,

crown of the human kingdom –

like yellow-black spry swallowtail

up from your petrified cocoon,

or incognito monarch

skittering from ark

to ark (Amsterdam-Rangoon

Line – Mendelssohn to Mexico)

– or like a tiny bulb

planted in mirror-hub

of rose islands – blazing so

                *

bright the whole sweet Seine will glow

from end to end –

the safety net, my friend!

Jonah’s repast (Apollinaire’s tomorrow).

Thus the planet’s plain warm hearth

was set in diamond

& salt – with two kind

hands melded was gentle Earth

into a homely heart (Heimlich

maneuver from afar).

Gates cracked ajar –

the broken cistern, Cain’s conflict –

the Minotaur in every man –

the frozen ideologies,

bitter mythologies

of gulag-mind, in her began

to melt... the light played on the iron

spring... rust turned

green... mold burned

clear... the Psyche-lamp of Zion

lifted from the harbor.  Then

that fireplace couch of ages

in the molten kiln of sages

rose from black soil – crowed the Hen-

Cock!  Morning gathering beneath

the lighthouse surfaced

in your radiant face

O Matrix of candescent wreath.

12.13.16

hen hides under blanket

LITTLE RINGS

In the muted Bruegel colors now

a raven’s-eye view circles

round twin Mirror Lakes

in Mendelssohn, so long ago.

Heidi & Holly, Jamie Freeman –

kids in a panorama

skate across my retina

from a Flemish Ice Age (Union

Pearl, foundered in frozen cup).

Laertes, will you drink

with me?  I think

not, yet... & so I take it up.

How gravity spins round the Sampo,

Longfellow – how Minnehaha

eddies through Edina

like a maelstrom over Nanabozo

– silly wabbit in the old cartoon

of Manitou & Redman –

stormcloud, lightning (Hen

hides under blanket, ‘til monsoon-

tornado trundles off to Canada).

Rabbi, Rabbi... Raven-

priest, Melchizedek... when,

O Wind, will this wallowing miasma,

lethal raincloud, lift?  A voice

from hurricane murmured –

when the agate here immured

in North Sea tears, as in a vice

                    *

floats into primeval Paradise

upon a simple kayak-word

out of the lunar hoard

of acorn-candelabra : REJOICE.

The train rumbles over the bridge

in the iron night, in the rain.

I won’t be back again

until Ferrara meets the Iron Range

in a poem coming down from winking

Starry Night.  Those whorls

are fingerprints – pearls

whispered out of Ocean, drinking

planets, orbits, icons, emblems

drawn from infinite thirst

for a milky source (first

taste of infamous black diadems).

Bears navigate a starry circle

over Berryman.  The stone

crypt glows in the bone-

castle.  Jessie Ophelia will

step down from the riverboat

beaming for Minneapolis.

The sky is gray, is

Minneapolis, St. Paul... c’est tout.

In Mendelssohn the Mirror Lakes

are ripples ever-new.

You’ll understand... you

live there (little rings an iron makes).

11.26.16

down a river to the Keys

LIGHT RHYMES

End of summer on the river path.

Light almost plaintive

through cottonwood leaves,

a frieze of tall pillars.  A froth

of rambling wildflowers, tender lavender

nameless to me – it’s not

rhodora, in this woodlot

astride mud-coppery earth-bender...

So Hobo goes mumbling along.

A road of melancholy

adoration (holy

fool, remembering a door, a song-

agate)... rowing, rowing down

a river to the Keys.

Angling through trees,

light rhymes with breeze (a wind-sown

octave); a fleet bird whistles

through hearkening cedars.

Her labyrinth of tears

might be a simple maze of thistles –

a hobo circus of circumference

around the dense mast

of a coracle.  Its ballast

is adhesive mutuality – love-sense

smiling through some kid’s affection

for a friend... Mendelssohn

in harmony, one

ark out of many waters (milky lesson).

9.19.16

antipodean parks

SILVER CHEST

Uncle George the plowman zigzags calmly

weaving his furrows back 

& forth (west of Fond du Lac).

Laboring almost at rest, along his way.

The black soil teems with memories.

Childhood in Mendelssohn,

a helium balloon –

only now the fatal pine shades Miriam’s

plein air Jubilee (specific gravity

of coffin-keel).  Time,

History here touch the rim

of a labyrinth (Fro-Back, so corny)

whose perimeter outlines her face –

smiling, dreaming, lost

in the supple meadow-grass

of Eros flowering to Agape (O Grace).

Spruce Mountain rises straight ahead,

pilgrim – just south of Bonnie

Craigielee.  Matilda will be

waltzing there, in a tamarack shade

not far from the sea; she will take your hand

where kids’ bird-voices

boomerang – where earth rejoices

in equilibrium, & equity.  One command

radiates Franciscan swag of turtledove;

one cloud sheds orange arcs

over antipodean parks

of aboriginal penitence (blue Jonah-love).

8.22.16

painting by Phoebe Gould (about age 10)

implicate my speech

IRMA’S FLING

Sly Raven implicates my speech

with folded shade.  A bright

dove spangles dew-light

drifting the stream.  On the beach

by Mississippi, one yellow-black ensign

of cottonwood, one limestone

arrowhead.  An unknown

bird hums wings into a grey spine-

feather matrix – hovers droning

like yellow gyroscope

(totem for sun).  Hope

is the thing... the Word spins honing

like a drill toward a red diamond,

flaking hieroglyphs

& copper cypress skiffs

for one crossroad encounter (bond

of your voice, speaking soft to me,

from vise of mine).  Zone

of Mendelssohn tombstone –

of flint, cracked open for humanity –

to pour through like sprung torrent

& never cease flowing,

as when a raven crowing

from an empty cave (craven, abhorrent)

signals a seed flung by a planet’s wing –

smiles through the sea-gate

like Peacock Angel – fate

spannered by a checkmate (Irma’s Fling).

8.2.16