where the spring is found

ROBIN HUM

This plaintive spring, like a lonesome robin

piping his distance at the riverbank.

Out of The Tender Land, I think.

The vast bronze river is one serpentine

vibration.  A continental vernal sign,

stretching with catenary smiles

from Lake Itasca to the marshy isles

off New Orleans.  & Hobo sez – all mine.

Dotted with gravity of local bridges,

1132 miles (up & down).

Their almond arcs a pontoon

cascade… cavernous vector of ledges…

climbing toward a flimsiest first whorl

of fiddlehead crowns

at the source of sounds –

where the spring is found.  All shall be well

& all manner of thing shall be well

when the blazing rose shall dwell

at the matrix of clay wheel,

& Thunderbird boom his bronze bell.

& the cry of the mighty bird & the sigh

of the river sound one octave :

unison, played in the key of Love.

For though I sing like angels & men… & though I

have all knowledge – all prophetic wisdom

of stars & planets, capitals

& kings – yet I have not caritas…

I am but sounding brass.  Hear Robin hum.

3.19.20

print on linen by Grace Tagliabue & Phoebe Gould

dream song for Mardi Gras

WIDE SWINGS

In the remote silence of your dream

little Ojibwa cowboy,

every word, every sigh

your lips would bend to the birch beam.

Each syllable would lift up smoothly

like wing or wave, to join

the sarabande procession

flashing tiny stars in their night-cloud sky.

The piety of Aeneas or of Abraham

is tinctured with the same

topaz humility; the fame

of Black Elk flares no different requiem;

& Hobo’s yearning in the Bottomland

& Henry’s striving at the source

obey the same bone-flute discourse –

to verify one sweet-tempered command.

& like a low B-flat trombone bass line

out of some Delta funeral-song

the aura of her Don’t-be-long

with magnetism of her Love, B-mine

goes rippling counter-clockwise, from St.-J

to D.C. piles of masonry

& back to Lake Itasca –

& like mustard monarch or viceroy

lifts tender, glancing & reflective wings

to meet your own, brave

Jessie-Isis – clear sea-wave.

Peace pipes over the Golden Gate, wide swings.

2.25.20

at edge of Gulf, at Mardi Gras

MUSTARD TEAR

So ancient Carnival-time creaks around

Hobo, at winter’s nadir –

up & down the copper

serpent-river, ice to Gulf, from underground.

Seigneur Latrobe & son (masonic

architects) glide on

into their slanted lichen

tombs, below the levee.  Chronic

exploitations, born of lordly guile

condemn brother & sister

to the poorhouse – maybe

forever (never God’s will).  Meanwhile

Mardi Gras Indians from Cajun swamps

tiptoe, sauntering in beads &

feathers, vaunting weeds

beside Big Muddy… spin their vamps,

magnanimous & happy-go-lucky!

As Frazer phrased it once,

the Oak-King was dunce

for a day, scapegoat – to bind three

realms, to decorate the grim

reality of king-dom

(manacled to thrum

of male plumage, sly rhythm

of greed).  Meanwhile us tramps lie in our camps

the ciphered segregation

of a riven nation –

the politic paralysis of frozen clamps

                *

unbroken for a generation

yoking partisans

of limited taxation

with particles of airy explanation.

Yet lo, Hobo! the sleepy sleepwalker

still reigns under the rain…

King Virbius in blue vervain,

Osiris-man of verby us (dumb talker)!

One lone mustard tear of Isis

flowing down the dream;

knit-wit of Union, seam-

by-seam… Columbia, thy hum he is!

& out of one immense unspoken heart

on its wheel of suffering

flies this foam… a sparkling

shield of steely martyrdom – cart

of churl & Charlemagne, Big Bear,

Charles’ Wain – iron hinge

of Milky Way!  Melange

of pipesmoke sacrificial princes, there!

Martin, & Jack, & Abraham…

William & James… lights

winking from Astraea’s height –

sea-foam & flotsam of the cosmic Lamb!

At the edge of the Gulf, at Mardi Gras

Hobo floats to sea, to see…

out of wrath & misery

lamps of justice, liberty – her wings, Noah!

2.23.20

sketch by Benjamin Latrobe

train to Boston

FATE-LINES

Hobo follows his instinct to the river.

A serpentine circulation,

labyrinth – heart’s burn.

Romans might haruspicate the liver

of an ox, or note the forays of a raven

like smoke-signals overhead;

Hobo lingers with his own dead

Providence photos – train to Boston

or that old blind man who walks the plank

straight off the cliff (at Prospect

Park).  Ghosts intersect.

Eurydice in San Fran hits a blank

wall of blue salt water.  Prince Henry Hal

uproots the better part of soul

to be the bard imperial –

shelving himself with racks of Fleurs du Mal.

To be refuge for troubled consciences,

Rhode Island was.  & was.

Hobo works with materials

by eye-in-hand (fate-lines, hunches);

commissioned for a wedding-song

of earthen pots (Cahokian)

& Morning Star – where one

Virgo-conjunction plants her Gateway prong

the Rio del Espiritu Santo will merge

St. El with Muddy Waters

& Ravenna’s virgin martyrs

with a N’Orleans fanfare... cosmic splurge.

12.10.19

to shade the children from the burning sun

my Hobo Code coffee cup

WAVE-THRUMS

I’m coming to the crown of the river-tree

& the mouth of the copper serpent

following Hobo, where she bent

toward the Delta of American poetry.

& there’ll be singing & dancing, each clown 

hootin’-&-a-hollerin’

& dressed up like an Indian

to celebrate the simple joy of Union.

& I’ll trail behind Benjamin Latrobe

the good mason of Washington

taking after his dear son

to build a floating city from mosquito-glob;

I’ll watch that Phoenix-bird arise

like an evening Jonah,

spreading her ghost-persona

wings from Frisco Bay to Providence

to shade the children from the burning sun

& fly them to a new playground

where wave-thrums sound

their steady oceanic Truth for everyone

whose eyes merge in the Sophie-bark

curving over the Churnagogue

(octagonal pine-log

hover-canoe; dynamic-ceramic arc

empowered by the muscled wheel

of hopeful human clay)

– J-stroking toward an Agape

aflow to share, to guide, to lift, to heal.

8.20.19

shout it from the rooftops

CLEAR PINE

Hobo was playing solo crane bone flute

like an airy trompette marine

as he watched Henry puzzle on,

muttering his thumpy rhythms en route.

It’s the Union, the Union, Hobo intoned –

as your eye is clear & light

in the pasture breeze – right?

We wrestle with this violence, shark-boned

with vicious avarice – yet Sophie-gentleness

may rule at last, a restoration

of your soul’s volition –

the true child-wish, mild & harmonious

as that lamb-lily in the tiger’s eye;

as Sophie plays her middle Cs

at center of the keys

& swings all 88 into the sapphire sky.

Hope is our natural state – for a grace

bestowed, unbeknownst to us.

Lost & found – like that Tombs

Angel, swimming from the marble face

to lift a prisoner out of the dust –

Rebecca Salome Foster, spun

by Bitter-Lamb into the sun;

drawn out again (by Jeremy Ann) at last...

So Henry clutched the muddy wheel

& turned it, counter-clockwise;

from oceanic Providence

to clear pine river-source... you feel

                       *

it turning, turning... into San Francisco

& a rainbow pigeon-throat

blent with rainbow trout

all natural wonders for that footloose hobo

full of ecstatic spiritual deliverance

marked on his feet & palms

from walking, chanting psalms

all the way to the Delta – joyeux entrance

into azure Gulf, American trumpets

O when the saints

come marching in...

& the clay wheel turns bronze serpents

into flame-gold lambs, whose linking thread

folds limbs into a March on Washington :

where they will wash away corruption

& the violence greed breeds – the dead

shall climb up from their graves, & dance

the Beguine – the beginning again;

the restoration of all men & women

in the clay river-light of Cahokia’s immense

plateau – across Big Muddy from the sky-

blue angle of the Gateway Arch –

that silvery canoe, echoing the arc

of one invisible & omnipresent loving eye :

Aye-Aye of Providence.  Elliptical wafer

lifted from humble bowl...

Hagia Sophia (universal

soul) wearing her limestone life-saver.

8.9.19

the stubborn Acmeist

AMERICAN THING

The way a stream flows around a piece of granite

rough gray in the water, winking

with rose quartz, mica (splintering).

So the stubborn Acmeist would honor that

which is, that which exists.  & Osip

would agree with Oscar Cullmann

as to the meaning of Redemption –

it’s already happened.  So right worship

is a thing of joy – ample gratitude

for being, & the hope

of Restoration (its full scope

a celebration, braiding bread & wine).  You’d

barely sense the almost-infinitely distant

echoes of a first Thanksgiving...

everyone hoisting something

to that scrawny picnic table (ancient

light).  So as we J-stroke forward

let’s return to New Orleans

with B. Latrobe, who kens

the old French buildings there (mired

in mosquito nets & drainage swamps);

where he will follow his own son

to his malarial grave (one

body, bread & wine).  Under yellow lamps

like fireflies in the harbor (swaying,

soaring).  Scintillant mosaic

for one lugubrious Republic

(hopeful, Creole).  Clay American thing.

8.6.19

sounds vaguely French

MOSS-GREEN

Benjamin Latrobe – sounds vaguely French?

A British architect

tapped to repair, perfect

the Capitol (amid the stench

of swamp & burning).  Dogged by debt

& selective smear campaigns

sets off for New Orleans

to finish big water-works his late

son Henry had so blithely begun

(cut down by yellow fever

in September).  Ever-

green cypress can withstand the rain.

New Orleans doorways lead you back

in time (Edgar Degas

plein air sketches...

moss-green veneer, live-oak

with levee-wash).  Mississippi

spills relentlessly

into the blue & salty

Gulf.  Her sea-monstro be you & me,

O Jessie O.  L’architecture

de l’Amerique c’est plain

& simple, utilitarian –

only... we’d like to see that azure

Paradis, un jour.  Le bateau ivre

des pirates-frères, Lafitte...

en bas le bayou, sweet

Benjy.  Lisez ton ombreux livre.

6.24.19

moss-green lamb-rock

CHERRY PETALS

Anniversaries, conjunctions... Latrobe’s

bell tower in New Orleans

& a birthday (Walter Whitman’s)

twine reverberations, stellar probes.

This lone outcrop in far north wood

furred-over with green

& phosphorescent lichen

mimes in lime our original Head –

primordial earth-ram (sheepish lamb)

upon the adamant of Time –

Isis, or Miriam –

Virgin bedrock of the bright I AM.

Inexorability of violent history –

labyrinth of Minotaur –

wolf-trap for who we are

spooled out in filmy, rusty tragedy

after tragedy – the pile-up of ’68

the green redhead in Dallas

the blue blackbird in Memphis

& it all seems endless – infernal hate –

O brazen, obdurate Iron Age

of malice toward all!  Only

the slant eye of poetry

mourning on a misty Montauk stage

might warble a different kingdom comin’ –

chaste infant equality.

Your hummingbird infantry,

Walter – your cherry petals, Benjamin.

5.30.19

surfing Delta gumbo

sketch by Benjamin Latrobe, architect

LIGHT DOWRY

On this day, 200 years ago

Benjamin Latrobe won

the municipal commission

for the bell tower in New O. –

St. Louis Cathedral, surfing delta

gumbo (French-Indian-

Spanish-Anglo-American)

on canoe-back of turtle-flotilla.

Oak Apple Day, Restoration Day,

Rhode Island Statehood Day

& many another day

no doubt (not far from Whitsunday).

In the well of the king, of the king who must die

(before time began?) shone

a shade of green pine

grieving... like an old Irish eye.

Luminous melancholy, just a shade

from joy – from the well

of well-being, when all

shall be well (amid all things well-made).

When frost of fright-scorn, the old

icehouse of sacred king

slides into melt... & everything

shines in right splendor of childhood;

when young ones in Rhode Island

or New Orleans lift themselves

to the light dowry of El

Shaddai – her pact of love and understand.

5.29.19

the American dreamwork

NAVE RESTORATION

The American dreamwork seems to grow

of itself, like a vagrant

acorn’s buried descendant

branches roots into veins of air, so –

leaving yourself behind, then

as in a park playground

at dusk, all around

echoing shouts of kids having fun

within the green lamps of those trees

& the circle of daydreaming

grownups, their evening

rest emerging at last – the iron wheeze

of the swing-set beginning to mesmerize

with its creaky metronome –

& you have a premonition of home,

like a matryoshka doll of paradise

or a houseboat nested in a boathouse.

American as they don’t get?

Anonymous as a planet

without name, yet – Isis, Osiris...

A figure stands at the dream door.

They put the body there?

Now it’s not anywhere.

He gone, she gone (to tell them more).

Hobo Ulysses glides toward New Orleans,

St.-Jeanne of the Delta,

Jonah.  Coracle fella,

acorn Cap.  Nave restoration’s what it means.

5.17.19

12th Night fol-de-rol

ROYAL BEAN

This airy painted Christmas ball

with its river of snowflakes,

twin gondola remakes

wobbling between the RISD Market Hall

& Industrial National Bank –

old Providence downtown.

Little lonesome microcosm

some winter night.  World on the brink.

In New Orleans, in the French Quarter

they’re rifling a king cake

for the royal bean.  What make

& manner of lass or laddie shall be heir?

Assail the wassail; mayhap we’ll see.

Everything is topsy-turvy.

Plastic Jesus is a curvy

smiley-doll – wee replica of you & me.

Let’s party.  Okean River flows

down from Milky Way

to Ocean State... happy

birthday!  Queen Flower-Child knows

all about Path P; X mark ze spot

where little Charlie’s acorn

sprung into a tall greenhorn.

Watching over still – almond knot-

maze in flutestones of Chartres

(her name is Jessie)

wavering out of Galilee.

Canoes bear her palladium (& ours).

1.5.19

not kingly oak

SPRY LIMBS

Not kingly oak, nor prescient almond...

just some pale cottonwood.

Moon milky-green, for good

measure.  Shedding vagabond

fluffballs – like poetry, or

cotton boles – bales

for Memphis, N’Orleans...

spry limbs bent into hangin’ tree.

I go into jags & eddies, dried

pemmican.  Downstream

from vinegar dream-

sponge (where the Bre’r-man died).

If the Word were truly a fluffball of light

I would be acorn coracle

green mote on miracle

worker spinal curvature (bent wight).

It gleams through red Pipestone

peacepipe – an emerald

happiness, turned gold

as sunshine.  Welcome, Everyone!

Translucent presence of a place

for you, before all places

cling to timespaces...

a nest for omnipresent Falcon-Ace.

Benevolent breeze, that moves these leaves

to waver into swing-time

antimatter – chime

morning with Hope (sings in the sheaves).

6.6.18

sunset orange

LAST STAND

The grey pebble, the unknown soldier

flung like a meteor

or Pippin to the ocean floor

blazes with spiritual authority (chaired

in the adamant of Time).  Quick

fiery arc of Jeanne,

dove-mild, Columbian –

from sweet Itascan spring to thick

Louisiana live-oak grove (along

a serpent’s labyrinthine

swerve).  Dream-scene.

Microcosm in a hobo’s glass, song-

songe awakened on Rose Island.

In your eye, Henry –

in our eye (INRI).

Crossroad of a king’s last stand.

Royal beyond kings, in their halls

of mirrors (drawing near

like Minotaur, a minor

character in Humpty-Dumpty Falls).

Lightning of intellectual fire

with rattling Thunderbird

enclosing Red Wing – Word

for equal brother, sister – Sire

& Siren in candescent colloquy.

Sheba & Solomon

enfolded in one zone

Galla (octagon vault-canopy)

                *

Placidia (ample, enduring crown)

might set like Orpheus

to shepherd sheepish US

to her clay plateau (emerald, ultramarine)

within Ravenna’s salty limestone

tombs (carted away

to Rimini, Ezra)

Franciscans monitor (Dante’s is one).

Henry-Hobo, ascending from the grave

of buried Berryman

under a Minnesota sun

shrives everything (old beggar-knave)

to thread the needle, so narrow

from Providence hillside

through Julian suicide

& Gateway Arch, to San Francisco

Porta Povertà – the Golden Gate

rimmed sunset orange

to rhyme with that strange

Libertà, shining in every heart...

the Jonah-Dove, or Jeanne d’Arc,

or Jenny Littletree

Corn Maiden, in D.C. –

my Pocahontas statue in the park

veiled by the evening radiance

of West Branch, Iowa.

I am the Mystery-Yahweh

of Life, she say – the dew’s sundance.

 5.30.17

I take the zigzag iron

OCEAN CHRONICLE

Once more I take the zigzag iron

steps to the river, messy

with ice floes, shaggy

snow.  Leaning like a blind man

on a walnut cane – elliptical

wobbles part of the scene –

a yellow Mediterranean

hypercube out of Israel

by way of Ravenna, or Voronezh.

Brown Mississippi,

take me on your hippy,

roll me with your palm-cortège

like a Mardi Gras Chief, bowing

Guillem’s trompette marine

– don’t bow to none

but God & Queen Marie (wheeling

like a rose kaleidoscope, sheer

levitating waterfall).

All the birds of the air will

chatter in that live-oak cedar –

rainbows scattering in all directions

like arrows from the sun.

They speak for everyone –

whistling starling-projections

mapped onto a merry time-

space Ocean chronicle

the Lady will unshackle –

Shekinah, or Magdalen... L’Chaim!

12.9.16

Une Saison en Fever

SUNDAY PALM

The muted still-gray river

slides past cottonwoods

& snow, makes hay towards

New Orleans.  Fevered février –

saison de décision.  Party

of the partisans puts up

game faces – trumpets

bray wide, nosing opportunity –

battle flags ahoist, strong words

spray sound (Spartan array).

She moseys on her way,

accompanied by big black birds.

My soul, you tap your Sunday palm.

Must carve down, serpentine,

through plated clay – shed skin

to utmost bone.  A Lenten hymn –

let it all go.  Beneath gray stone

lies diamond – the fiery

akme of the maker,

kamen of Cape Horn (cross-thorn).

The Rio flows toward the Gulf

into the center of the earth.

Where molten rock gives birth

to metamorphs of sheep & wolf –

of black & white, of red & gold.

This alchemy’s a Union

sparked before the sun –

along still waters (as of old).

2.18.16

Steady as she goes

VERMILION FLEM

Late afternoon.  Light sound

of soprano bell, from bass

drone of freight train

over river-bridge.  Nothing profound

(just slightly wistful).  A poet keeps

time.  In the ear’s recess,

faint heartbeat-stress

marks passage of the sheep

over the dream-track.  Nothing more

nor less.  Down N’Orleans way

the Indians are gay

tonight, beaded with coronation Flor

del Rio del Espiritu Santo.  Amen

& hallelujah, hey-

ey-yo.  Let us pray

for the grain of wheat, the salty bran

of liberation (touch of soul,

Touchstone).  So dance

your way into the trance,

Hal Marie!  & remember, all –

tomorrow’s Lent (already).  The square

of ash upon your brow

a sailor’s salty vow

to steady as she goes (fair,

kind & true).  His hand waves from

the deep – he’s called Acorn.

He wears an English crown

of oakleaf (he’s Vermilion Flem).

2.9.16

Courtesy of Anny Ballardini:

New Orleans & books 

 
The New Orleans Public Library is asking for any and all 
hardcover & paperback books for people of all ages in an 
effort to restock the shelves after Katrina. The staff will 
assess which titles will be designated for its collections. 
The rest will be distributed to destitute families or sold 
for library fundraising.

 
Please send your books to:

Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations 
New Orleans Public Library 
219 Loyola Avenue 
New Orleans, LA 70112.