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

to Nathan Phillips

GREEN HABITAT

                                    to Nathan Phillips

The Mirror Lakes in Mendelssohn

were smooth & clear – were

mirrors of the weather,

mirrors of each other (twins).

Your mind’s a mirror too (cloudy

today, with intimations

of its limitations).

Looming earth, a child’s infinity...

In his mandorla of Ferrara

Giorgio hooked the canoe

against a garage wall (you

remember, Micòl?).  Observe, selah

its simple elegance & rightness.

Mirror of itself –

bowstring of Guelf

& Ghibelline.  O blessed senselessness!

I surmise the one you call Jesus Nazir

arose not in hothouse of fear

but a rural atmosphere –

full of parabolic melodies, limpid, near.

The Son of Man... the Son of Man...

not him, but you – & you...

like Hagia Sophia in a crew

of galley slaves.  Their submarine plan

winks from searchlight eyes – their fleece

the gold thread of Ariadne,

knotted in Rhode Island

Black Ships (ocean’s milky matrix

                      *

poured from ineffable Promised Land).

In Siena, insouciant Pax

lounges by sober Justice

in the fresco of Good Government (hand

of Ambrogio).  That thread from beyond

exotic Trebizond

plummets, au fond

to Minotaur’s despair – demented Roy

Dumonde; yet we are gathered up

into another summa

body – solidarità

of Love’s affectionate grail-cup.

It was not price nor money could have

purchased Rhode Island;

Rhode Island was purchased

by love.  So step into the rawhide nave

of Nathan Phillips’ Wakan Tanka –

Spirit beyond each sullen

pond of identification.

Spring winds the rust of iron rancor

into another, more spacious America –

florid green habitat

of Uncle Weaver Rabbit,

Auntie Corn Gatherer (limestone Columbia).

That mud-brown mirror harbors hidden

depths.  & yet she’ll float –

Nile-Isis, river-mote –

your eye-in-hand (nearby, Cahokian).

1.19.19

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

equality knocks

FLIGHT-PATH

The heavy freight cars clinky-clunk

across the iron bridge.

The fright none can abridge,

tribes’ crimes, no matter how deep-sunk

beneath Big Muddy waters of oblivion...

a heap of birds, still footloose,

shoeless (moccasins,

not lady-slips) – each alien citizen

from Cloud Man Village (in mirrors

near Mirror Lakes).  The DNA

gets even with Edina,

Adam – eidolons of Mendelssohn longeurs

gone wilder now, gone weedy, native.

Your nimble paeans, flying

yeast to west, are tying

knots of soul pain into silos – jive

dives backwards (ortus/porta) –

Heidi skips Handel

by hand – O almond

rod of generations!  Your vice-versa

treads of controversy flipper

the dial upon a human

(orant) golden mean.

Gaunt sundance of elderberry skipper

deep within the pilot-whale

of Jealousy – hurt pride

taken for cane-ride

through hell-hole, pole to pole

                 *

until you turn a new triangle –

in Bermuda, Berkeley –

by the Western Sea,

where Empire meets the salty shingle.

Reverse the langish!  Scrape the jam

off the doors!  Behold

What-th’Dicken’s-Son would fold

into an origami florilegium!

Cloud Man Village lasted one decade

in Minneapolis, where we

ten-thousand-century

people have planted roots – jewelweed

4th of July parade, indeed!

– a Black Elk hexagon

or hazel moth, gone

in the wrinkle of a wavy diamond.

Systole, diastole... orange arcs

repeat heartbeats,

where azure shelters fleets

of sails... flight-path of firefly sparks.

In Cloud Man Village, where the theft

& violence are felt,

are lifted with a grain of salt

to taste the bread of silo pain – deft

metamorphosis of Yahweh wrath

to steady charity –

calm spun-gold chariot,

cedar Melchizedek love-bath.

9.22.17

Walk through the mirror

MINOR TEAR

Bleak winter shades... crows in the trees

beak-gnashing, rasping (caw-

caw, hawk-hawk).  Low

Earth, rotund silentium (dregs, lees).

Stillness of still-life – Brown Decades

(hoist Peto).  The Just Man

imago is just a man –

barely there, through simple glades

of green.  Mirror Lakes liked him,

in Mendelssohn.  Only

an infinitely gently-shivery

Rabbi, Hiawatha Honeybear – bro Jim,

our lunky logos (penny-loafing).

Who bears it all, past

He- or She-Cat’s paste-

up Geryon-masque (a scary nothing).

This maze contains a minor tear.

& through a crevice there

one Ariadne hair

leads you to almond-gold rain-bear.

Earth seethes with ziggurats of fraud

& blind men lash themselves

to violence (selva

oscura mitts gorilla code);

but it shall not be so with thee.

Bunny hikes one eye

& looks for wheeling Eli

to come by (benevolent memory).

3.3.16

Cirque Planetaire

UPSTART HILLS

Gray coal cars thunder monotonously

across an old iron bridge.

Only a local image

in midwestern bleak.  Your poem will be

allegorical, of necessity

since an Earth so various

is only one of a series

on parade (sparkling panoply

du Cirque Planetaire).  Italian sun

is as a brazen shield

above scarred poppy field;

the moon a candle in Pavian dungeon...

Poema Sacra, Dante’s testament

è tutto didascalico –

a climber’s manual (to go

from shady gloom to cheerful summit

of Rose Mountain splendor).  My sun

rides low in winter sky,

chanting How Not to Die

in plain & soulful Minnesotan

(Ojibwa).  The dream of history

breaks open at its heart.

All-human upstart

hills (Superior, or Tuscany)

fill nets of silver phosphor –

your soul’s a philosopher

in love with twin Mirror

Lakes (Justitia, Amor).

1.13.16