like an unremarkable cup nest

SLOW CHANT

Brown river, in a transept of browns.

In a gully of mid-March.

She slides by Arch

to Gulf, to be engulfed (drowns).

A scrawny bird scrapes overhead.

Plain sea-gull?  Or

some magpie pio-pio –

newsy jailbird finch (last heard

in 1938)?  What about Mudpie Robbins,

the St. Louis Cardinal?

Pitches his meta-material

nested steady state hysteresis (spins

on clumps of slag – chaotic shmush

of paired radii

with reversible pi

slippage).  Camouflage whoosh

like an unremarkable cup nest, filled

with grass & rootlets…

one a them twig safety nets!

Jams into stadium – an emerald,

mobile stable of staple u-particles

crowded along a spectrum

between sand, cotton… some

aleatory compass… (see Hunter King articles).

Over the chained bay waters –

rhumb line of pilot-bird.

Oscillating upward

into a faery 4-leaf clover’s

             *

earliest, minuscule sward…

as a Newport plover’s

nimble track veers

o’er sand waves (Ocean bard).

So from the lifeless mineral heart

of Minotaur, a green

sprig, emerald gemstone

springs.  With Nestorian art

(Eugenio’s grin) all the birds of the air

assemble in the palm tree;

a mustard seed (tiny,

fiery) molts to canoe (in her Ferrara lair)

& branches crossways, into quatrefoil; 

the remote & royal midnight

blue of Southern Cross (right

up there) hovers over river-soil,

& the Firebird (that sole Pentecostal

scorching glossolalia

slammed into orb-regalia)

skims from our Mater Dolorosa

biomimetic widow Rose… bent

beneath rose window

(Apollinaire’s slow

chant out of humbuggery, resilient).

So the nesting instinct of the Nazir,

the mother Hen of Rabbi

Rooster-Crow, will sigh

& spring an Easter egg (O Chanticleer).

3.18.20

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

when morning stars sang all together

ROSE QUARTZ

                  

The delicate crystallographer

chipped at rose quartz

in a mica mirror.  What’s

wrong with the signal?  Fuzzier,

now, out of Nazireth.  We’re

missing the calendar,

oh hazy November –

have to find a new atmosphere.

Hobo (along jungle river)

envied that lofty poet

on the hilltop.  What

brings you here, Indian-giver?

The Song of Minnehaha (Henry

Wordfish Lungfellow);

light black-&-yellow

swallowtail (aye, amen, Re).

In Happy Hunting Ground,

HHG.  Your twin

brother – like the sun

breaking through Narragansett Sound –

when morning stars sang all together,

hearty & brave (children

from incandescent freedom-

sun).  Under the tender tether

of ineffable Intellect   O

lambent   star (Grace

Ravlin   Falcon-Ace)

with Notre Dame   at zero-

                 *

hour.  Your brother is a simple

carpenter, Hobo.  He

studied Victimography

with Cyber-Ciphering, & Ample

Anthropology (Social Jeering) –

yet loved that golden

bubble (in the cauldron

of the level) more than anything.

Because the sense of being right

flows like a burbling

stream – wondering

into verbal dirigible... bright

speaking thundercloud... imaginary

friend of Liberty

(Decembrist charity –

Crimean exile, Pushkin-boy).

The government of Liberty

is of consent, not force;

our kingdom of remorse

enfolds Redemption at its source.  See,

child?  We have outlived the Minotaur;

Ariadne’s simple thread

leads to your kindred

by the glowing gemstone samovar

of hearthblaze – everlasting joy

warm crystalline kingdom

rose-violet   freedom

smokehole to Wakan Tanka   in the sky

11.25.18

Election Restoration Day

BLACK LAMB

Henry’s diary for a dying day

saunters into November.

After Wars to End All War

will Guillem find his smoky way?

Apollinaire in a Sikh turban

waits out the head wound.

Carried to the ground

from a Paris window (11/11).

Long way to Tipperary, Gil.

Grandpa in his macintosh

in Belgium rain... gosh,

long ago, Captain.  Farewell.

So long.  Today’s Election Day.

Are we of the electorate

yet?  Like a checkmate

in a game with yourself, aye –

Reds & Blues – rival brothers

in mired mirror war.

Each bears a torch

for her – the midnight soul mother,

those faces of benevolent fathers

children carry deep

into their forests of sleep.

Only the branding iron cauters

its contrary mosaics (through the Age

of Iron).  Black Elk

troubles the star-milk

with one royal touch (smoky sage-

                   *

brush sand mandala).  Soft, Selkie –

blue dolphin from Skye...

this mournful rage to die

sulks in the dark heart, MLK.

You must lift it from us, black lamb.

Forever & ever, light

candle through the night –

mass-vortex Gal of each I am, I am.

She smiles through waves, ineffable

Wisdom – heart’s foundation,

coracle of liberation.

She lifted Jonah (willing Abel)

into eye of hurricane –

the diamond matrix,

Everysoul’s six

ways – your dream song, Hen.

Her word burns like a fire in the Book

of Love, her Testament.

What Maggie meant

when she saw the young Nazir look

from the bright eyes of the gardener

& shouted, He is risen!

Out from your earth-borne

everlasting fire, world-fashioner!

So Morning Star whorls her self-sacrifice

& Guillaume flings another jest

& Henry’s safety net

swings sister-dove from rigor mortis.

11.6.18

eye in the level

replica of Roger Williams' compass, pocket sundial

SURVEY LINE

The pilgrim in the wilderness

like young George Washington

will draw a survey line

in order to project his progress

straight ahead, from point to point.

Primordial Providence

the paradisal focus –

your pen’s first instance.  Appoint

your 2nd Adam, then, Most High

to be the gold eye

in the level – bead the way

with your Accordion of earth & sky,

dream-song of host & guest alike.

My Christianity

is primitive, really.

This nazir chanting by the lake

was also Elohim; we sponged the vinegary

wine together, soaked

the dry bread – smoked

the peace pipe in his company.

My Providence is primitive as well.

Young Roger at the river’s

edge, his seekers, strivers –

welcomed, welcoming – a lunar shell

for pattern of a little government

upon her shoulder (Ocean

State).  Mirroring Sine

of Wave... rinsing tomorrow’s present.

9.14.18

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

stone, water, light, fire

DOUBLE RING

The agitations of a stone thrown in the stream

make ripples that become

a smooth continuum

of moving wheels.  One Gothic beam

draws light through stone and water –

blending elements

into high bafflements

of rainbow glass, mind with nature

beyond nature, reason with wonder.

Agnes – her exacting threads

trace Ariadne’s leads

through wilderness of sea & thunder.

Grant – his strange & strict constructions

spin a decussated

dream landscape – fated

black dirt looming beneath confections

of late sunset West Branch foliage.

Why, then, this mirage

of images?  The poet’s rage

wells from embodied fury – & her voice

– Arachne’s, Ariadne’s – is mortal

as that scar-calendar

of dread Coatlicue

unsnagged by force from Mexican corral.

Her poem is cast-iron Poseidon-net

straight from the furnace,

thus : a human face

veiled by the smoke of calumet

                     *

morphing brute fraudulence to peace,

transmuting blank white

voids to violet

& moss-green habitats of paradise.

St. Maximus Confessor, musing

monk, articulated

in theory what unfolded

in reality – fusion of divine choosing

with human liberty in understanding,

in enactment, as the spirit

moves us : radiant

tangle of wheels into a double ring.

All spokes are joined there, in the personal –

as in a room near Golgotha

babble turned glossolalia

& tongues aflame lit one bright coronal.

The poet chants out of that mental fire

& dances like a Nazirite

her intellectual delight

inviting you & me to join the choir

around that altar of a rolling stone –

a living hearth-fire

of the Earth’s desire

for equilibrium, once we throw down

the Minotaur lodged in our hearts.

Malevolent violence & lust

& greed for dominance must

be renounced... & so the dancing starts.

7.17.18

for Martin Luther King

DEEP SPRING

          for Martin Luther King

Late April snow.  A blinding white

50 years after Lorraine

Motel.  Memphis, again.

River-Land, seeking an Ocean State.

Rich port-of-call – the 51st, maybe?

Lost Black Sea pebble,

gray whale in trouble

(silent in the silence).  Who is she?

Grace filters into Providence

through stubborn darkness.

Rose Island light – less

diamond than dawn translucence –

only a signal for a wayward eye.

A Chartres chart, or maze

from Notre Dame (haze

mollifies her frozen sky).

The sleepwalkers smolder through smoke-

machines.  Father & son,

their colder war passed on –

unfriendly history (life’s but a joke).

Still roses bloom, in Galilee –

galactic Okean

become a local pond;

folksinging Nazir calling me

to dance, & calling you as well.

Deep spring’s Unknowability

leaps into charity –

a little Noah-boat skims out of hell.

4.4.18

mumbling toward spring

EARLY CAVE

To trace the plummeting ellipse

of these post-Easter flakes –

the hexagon each makes

a microcosm of the temple’s

lightweight, hollow honeycomb.

Awaiting his parousia...

ghost-dance Messiah,

Nazir out of Galilee-to-come.

Far-off tumult of primavera.

Genesis of purling springs.

Pale intermingling things

in punished neighborhoods (era

of Pharaoh, or Caesar).  Signals

from an early cave, or tomb.

Eternal vault (the womb

of patient Lazarus, of Jonah’s wails).

Natasha’s limp.... Clover’s marble

Isis-veil.  The keening

eye of Magdalen (far-seeing

heart).  A Galilean stable

where animals & refugees

breathe the same air.

Earth-time halts there –

her catenary thread a breeze

lifting twin pillars (Alpha &

Omega).  Planted so

in graveyard snow...

grain of renewal (to the end).

4.2.18

painting by Nancy Hart

my Bruegel panorama

AUTUMN AIR

The little gold galleys of the butternut

navigate through autumn air.

My Bruegel panorama

of proverbial bird-wit is fading out.

The motherland calls Hobo.  Every leaf

a chaste canoe... Rus, Rus.

The enemy be us,

pugnacious Pogo cries – war is grief

between brothers.  Apollinaire

drifts in gray whiffs

of wistfulness... his skiff’s

more tangled up with Minotaur

than was before, sighs Psyche-

Ariadne.  That graybeard

on Ravenna guard

surrounded by gray paint-debris –

he might be me.  Ocean is gray

as wing of turtledove today.

Way in the middle of the air

Ezekiel saw them wheels a’glory

Louis sang (on path LP

somewhere in Tuscany).

Leonardo da Vinci

drew Vitruvian Man like a Kali

on a microcosmic wheel of fire –

he was such a star!

& in the Last Supper

Judas & Jesus in sfumato-mirror

                  *

reach together across girlish Jean –

or do they reach for her?

Shocked faces of the men –

is it betrayal, or espousal sign?

Some knot of gravitational waves

whorls into matrix-vortex.

Beloved spindrift Rex

emergent from that sea of graves –

a eucharist or mystical body

encircled by a palm

inscrutable as that helm

of Jonah, breaching the cloudy

surf of Ocean River – O font

of soul-transfigurement!

So rooted in the fundament

we rise as citizens of Turtle-Tent –

when the Eternal comes, & we

are summoned to a wedding-

feast.  Melodious syrinx

of Orpheus-Nazir... blithe epi-

thalamium from sparkle-profundum.

Wrath of Kali-Coatlicue-

Moloch subsides away

& Leonardo frames his simulacrum

of one vernal smile... Mona Lisa

bubbly as Virgin

on the Rocks.  Come in,

she says; God’s blessing in persona.

10.19.17

agate density

GREEN HILL

Dante nearing the end of his poem

ambled around Ravenna

under cloudy skies.  He saw

the glinting tesserae in the high gloom

of San Vitale, Sant’ Apollinaris,

yet loved best

that older cryptic nest

Galla Placidia (Empress

for a day, exile & refugee)

had plaited long before –

with panel of Jesus-Nazir

styled as Arcadian Orphée

clasping rustic David’s staff,

loafing on a green slope

shared with sleepy sheep.

He loitered, gazing at the roof-

beams, lit with swirly-interlocking

whorls of 8-point stars

surrounding one small cross

like neon phosphorus – marking

their zones of cosmic midnight blue.

The mausoleum held

no body.  The rough shell

hid its agate density from view.

Primitive angel glyphs in caves

across the planet glimmer,

lurking, waiting for her

aria of plummet-stone, through waves

                 *

of spacetime, spiraling in Dante’s ear.

Singing, bringing in sheaves

(while Ariadne weaves

her fleecy oarlocks round one salty tear).

So tesserae reform, like Gospel

beasts into one

M – a beak so aquiline

& sharp to tear the casket lid from Hell –

the shearing blade of sheep from wolf,

of infant innocence

from feral insolence,

scattering bread across a shark-tooth Gulf.

Ariadne lifts her penny whistle sign.

A chartered Paris yearns

toward heaven – burns

for shame... the Minotaur’s declension

stokes the flames, flares orange

for a time (4 times).

In the House of 4 Pines

wind-chimes supplicate one ange

d’or via strange door (subterranean).

The flute still rhymes.

The sunny shepherd climbs

a green hill toward his Galilean

Psyche-Mendelssohn.  Sibelius

ratchets his violin...

geese fly from Ravenn

into Estonian concord (a Finnish Russe).

6.1.17

engr. by Harold Sund (from Ravenna : a Study, by Edward Hutton)

cradle of rain

RUDE EYE

Grey cradle of April rain.

Your riverine Nazir

or holy fool was here,

rounding his moat with a vision

of metaphysical hope.  Song

like Mendelssohn mandala.

Smallest coign (voilà!)

of the realm – just one among

many, Penny, to kingdom come.

Copper wrung with fire,

like Cassini in pyre

of saturnine canons – Love’s hum

somehow redeeming them, each little

statuette of soul 

freedom (the cosmic equal

sign).  A dab of mud & spittle

might reveal the night garden –

snowflake octavo

revolving over Buffalo

(holm oak to acorn, evergreen);

the whole note of the Nazarene

squared & shaved round

like some lost-&-found

locked-room problem – Tom the Twin

tying twine into a knot-cradle

of human & divine,

of Jew & Syrian

(or Greco-Roman republican).  Ladle

                  *

of Milky Way – the Twin Bear Cube

softly circling,

a tiny light unmoving

(port for Magi-King & rube).

The light strengthens as you climb.

Climb toward the broken

seal, the torn silken

veil, the split seed of our primal crime...

ecclesia & synagogue divided

in the keystone arch

as airy lark from larch

(twin siblings from earth-shaded

sky).  The seed is the salty word.

Out of the undivided

Ocean-Jonah glided

magnanimous eagle-wings – soared

into Benedictine Aesop-cells

from Africa to Memphis,

Iowa to Mississip –

aerie of equality, wells

of everlasting life.  That vermhurl

knot, spliced by an outcast –

Pushkin-slips so fast

the prophet scatters into whorl

of matrix-hurricane.  Rude eye

on Zion, Washington...

Heartbroken Hart (one

eggshell mason’s crooning sigh).

4.27.17