on the North Shore of the North Star state

SOFT KISS

Not far from Berryman’s Witch’s Hat

in Prospect Park, off Arthur Ave

Henry beholds spring showers lave

his plague-burnt Vale of Josaphat

(in Minneapolis).  It is a hard Lent

& shrunken plain to see –

April trundling mournfully

to graveyards.  Brash head bent,

hobo Henry Hal recounts his crimes

(near Purgatory Chasm,

in Newport).  Hopes a chrism

helps redeem his own end times

along Humility Way – the icy treason

of a lodestone heart.

His mother’s art

pierces also, beyond reason –

those 4 unsoldered quarters of clay tile

where Henry & Francesca swim

below a swirling rim

of Gooseberry Falls (old Ravlin file)

in the blithe innocence of marriage

unbetrayed… unmade,

not yet.  Like Longfellow glade,

or negative of Dante’s personal stage

(Circle of Lust) the two of us

will splash, forever smiling

in that riverine, beguiling

clay lost Paradise of faithfulness

                   *

& O the hubris of Superior Prince Hal!

To think he’d play the alpha male

to Berryman, beyond the pale –

snow-bent J. Beerust, in his dream-corral!

My clay ticks slowly on its glitter-wheel

toward kiln of Judgement Day.

But you might take another way,

Kidron – follow the foamy V of keel

into that Ocean River of the galaxies;

gaze up into the Royal Arch

where smile-canoe arcs

over candescent happiness... frees

hearts & souls into the wholeness

they were meant to seize!

That Charity of charities,

that source of every brimming goodness...

the grace of Miriam-consent (to give)...

true North Star of the Sea!

Friend Berryman would be

beside me here, in this infinitive

to live – an evergreen, emerald

eternity of growth –

an exponential for a moth

(or butterfly) to find – New World

born from the Old, as wings from chrysalis

when Spirit strokes like Thunder

through clay rings… & under

your rose aye of Providence (soft kiss).

3.25.20

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

I stir the Pythian gumbo of Apollinaire

BRONZE ANNALS

The Palladium forsook Byzantium

on a Black Wednesday

near Pentecost (hey

yo).  In the old Orpheum

Theatre (off Hennepin) Stravinsky

leads Ballet Russe

to rude cathartic truce

around the bonfire of a galaxy –

a human maypole (at the end of May).

She’s only Morning Star.

The young Apollinaire

is debonaire... they waltz away.

Salt sea-wash on another shore

throws up a Kennedy...

Melchizedek?  O, he

will pass through temple walls before

bronze annals of the oak tree close.

A little emerald windlass

winds your thread, Theseus.

A Selkie off the Newport coast,

a water-sprite from far-off Ocean...

laving heart of Berryman,

& salty Hart (Ohioan);

lifting Juliet from self-destruction.

Ineffable ark of Vierge Ouvrante,

imperishable human smile –

Love’s gentle campanile,

lofting aforesaid acorn-infant.

1.21.19

restoration will abolish dice

HOBO-MAP

The calm oval of the bridge

floats in the stream

like bubble on a beam.

A fringe of green trees edge

the shoreline... memory of summer.

Water seeks its own

level.  Every stone

melts in its riverbed.  Your humor,

Hobo, settles into Ocean State

as silky Mississippi

seeps into the mighty

estuary of the Gulf (trompette

marine).  So your melodious

escapism is salted too,

with fire – there ain’t no

place that doesn’t see you, Mose.

Cradle him in your coracle

of creamy wisdom, Sophie –

let light from a tree

of galaxies be his menorah (Huck,

that is – Huck Finn).  Your soaring

arc (beside Cahokia)

hovers, a stealth utopia –

eagle-prong, heat-seeking

beak from heaven.  Like that rapt

golden raptor, diving

on rainbow wing

toward his vanishing point

                *

(infinity) which Joachim (mulish

Franciscan hermit)

signed, Age of the Spirit...

Fusion of molten phoenix, starfish

turtledove... risen to dance

lightfooted on the grave

of death (one palm-wave

soothes her brow-circumference).

Only leave him his primitive wood-burnt

etching from Rhode Island.

Someone might understand

its clambit rhythm somehow – learnt

by beachcomber, drifted to sound

of sea-wash... steady laving

for pain... life-saving

Island Rose (from rocky ground).

The Word sings out of rosy shell chambers,

complex inflected folds,

ineffable.  She breaks molds

by clash of scalloping tambours –

beams smiling splendor in a glance;

beholds the Earth, clipped

into chains, gripped

by small potentates (from Bossy Manse)...

My hobo-map of Paradise

includes Newport (Jackie

& Jack wed, merrily);

my restoration will abolish dice.

11.6.17

slab of puddingstone

ALMOND LEAF

My lovely Providence, a microcosm

in the ruins of modernity.

Gray pebble by the sea,

colonial casque.  Slow periplum

around a clamshell iron rim –

like horseshoe crab

with buttresses, or slab

of puddingstone Bermuda-dream.

Today’s your birthday, spiny Jenny.

Evergreen of grief

& joy – almond leaf

of love’s firm spiral (funny

soul’s integrity).  You showed me

Piero della Francesca –

candid paisan Maria

pendulous with incendiary

monochord (trompette marine).

You showed me Providence

over your mother’s dense

grass gravestone (swan depression).

April is your azimuth;

mine too.  The cave

where Earth’s a voided grave,

where Berryman’s a vernal mouth.

Cicadas of Apollinaire

buzz over Île-de-France.

The veil of Adams’ Isis

tears – Columbia croons everywhere.

1.30.17

Newport, RI (near Berkeley's Seat)

Path P in six directions

ROSE CIRCLET

The immeasurable quiddity

of a point in spacetime.

An icon turns on a dime

flashing silver corona (so free)

– as green almond eyes shine

with smiles of recognition

a beloved face is one

whole star – 4-dimensional mine-

shaft to the planetary helm

or meteoric stone

no one can own

coming down from sea-grey realm

of milk & honey (Northern Lights

a mirror for a horn

of plenty).  So being born

thus, river-clay triangulates

Path P in six directions

diamond octahedron

finished in the sun

like plates my mother hexagons –

weathered oak-leaf hands (brown

in the round, rolled

out of clay, from old

dishevelments of tumble-down

autumn).  & where the tree-rings

circulate the marrow

spacetime’s arrow

coils into chestnut Sphinx

                  *

whose crumbled wine one drinks

out of the Nile-delta –

steps northeast  selah

toward the dome (when nobody thinks

one will) resembling a bronze acorn

of evergreen holm oak.

One ruddy spoke

upon a node of blinding sunshine –

ice-hewn clarity of Everyhon

beside the glowing hearth

of agape – the earth

in equilibrium – Son

& Father & the Holy Ghost

waltzing a crane-dance

to the drone of Magdalen’s

accordion (hale Mary’s host)...

& once the orgulous organ’s

dismantled, & the light

flows through violet

rose circlet (there in Jacqueline’s

seatown) – a naiad will emerge,

a sundance figure (on

the prow of Lincoln’s own

logos).  Sophie her demiurge,

love-waves her rite – La Paix

or Buffalo Woman,

Morning Star... pine-

green majestic Liberté.

10.19.16

Celestial canoe

Today, most curiously, is the birthday both of Edgar Allan Poe, and of his literary soulmate & would-be bride, Helen Whitman.  I've written a lot of local-historical poetry about them, & other local Providence things, which you can find here (best to start at the beginning).  

Edgar Poe was fading fast in the late 1840s.  Yet he had hopeful & grandiose dreams - of marrying Helen, of starting a new literary journal, of instigating an American cultural Renaissance.  It all came to nought... or not.  Poe, in characteristic ghoulish (Baudelairean) fashion, achieved his aims - after a century or so.  His Providential ghost-bride (Whitman) came at it from another angle... yet they reached the same goal.  (Walt was the only literary figure of note to attend Poe's lonely funeral.)

Early tomorrow morning, a rare alignment of planets will be visible on the North American east coast.  (Search below for confirmation.)

LILAC BARGE

In the Rock, the library, in Providence.

Snow’s hexagon glissando

falls on Whitman-Poe

birthday.  Athenaeum lens

(blind flash of mercury & lead)

poses twin agate lamps –

of seahorse hippocamps

& dread.  Envisioning (not-dead).

Dust-labyrinth of pupa-pharaoh.

Curious mummy-volumes

Oedipus exhumes...

– Eureka!  I have found you,

Madeleine!  In mold of lichen

Venn diagram (Raven) –

Martian crossroad, Jovian

Juliet-canoe... (shade of Ferrara sun).

Saturnine Henry disappears

under the alignment

of these stars’ bent

light palladium coheres

& spheres revolve (toward Galilee).

Into Newport Holy-Land

sail Jack & Jackie... Helen

Whitman... Eddie Poe.  One shy

brown bird, conducting lilac barge

beneath cedar boughs;

bearing between twin prows

her dewy double-ewed grail-charge.

1.19.16

Providence Athenaeum

Still life with JFK

PAPER SAILBOAT

His profile in shining lunar silver

twinkles with Dublin glee

on the half-dollar (JFK,

insouciant).  Camelot forever.

I was born in ’52, believe

it or not, but only

52 years ago I

lost my innocence (heave

sigh).  I was 11 years old

when they shattered the crown

of the redhead king.  My own.

A double birthday, dubbed.  Fold

up the deck of your paper sailboat, son;

in Newport they will mourn

the people’s chosen one,

killed by the backlash of the gun.

A still life, now.  Brown Decades

(Peto).  Reminiscences

of Lincoln.  Whitman’s

chrysanthemum (cresting cascades

of lilacs).  Memphis underworld –

I gather the limbs of Osiris

(52-pickup, Rimini-Venice).

First king, dead king.  Neighborhood

gossip has it, Solomon,

he’s coming back.  He

never died.  Like Jonah

Houdini, he’ll eat fish in Hebron

yet again.

11.22.15

Out sailing

Side note : "Rhode Island Statehood Day" is May 29th, which also happens to be JFK's birthday.  (& see NY Times article, where the photo appears.)

AMERICA’S CUP

An Ocean State sky, color

of sleep or turtledove

today.  Don’t move,

let the wind speak.  Late summer

mandorla of ripenings –

a little boat in your hand.

John off Rhode Island,

lounging, relaxed.  Bare shins

& feet propped up against gunnel.

Good book on deck,

half-moon of wooden oarlock

framing calm harbor.  Sea-knell

through the photo (Pietà).

When we go back to the sea,

whether to sail or to watch... we

are going back from whence we came.

America’s Cup... can you drink it with me?

The Round Table, the Lady

in the Lake... a malady

in the Grail (of all humanity).

One raven-prong drills through the human.

Black Sea sunlight rays

from the depths.  Maximus

with one hand frames the circle’s rim :

one sail traces its catenary arc

along a thread of fleece.

Ariadne’s peace, which

passeth fathom five... Mark.

9.13.15

JFK sailing, ca. 1950s

A Jewish Cemetery

Recently, as I found myself laboring over the latest stretch of poems in the ongoing projective geometry of Ravenna Diagram, it struck me that the materials & means that I use to compose poems might perhaps be remote & unfamiliar to many people who read & traffic in what is understood as poetry these days.

I realized, for example, that I was writing some poems which were actually examples of "widerruf", or parodic inversions of previous poems (Celan, for example, did this) - in this case, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport".

Longfellow is a wonderful poet.  (My mother was a childhood friend of his great-granddaughter.)  One stanza runs as follows :

Gone are the living, but the dead remain,

      And not neglected; for a hand unseen,

Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,

      Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

I played around with this stanza in particular, because while it refers, ostensibly, to God - providentially looking after the forlorn Jewish graves - it can also be understood as referring to some of my relatives, the early Quaker Goulds of Newport, who befriended the Jewish community there & were involved in the caretaking of the Newport synagogue grounds & graveyard.  My versions are parodic, however, in that they invert some of Longfellow's dated - though considerably complex & empathetic - attitudes toward the Jews; & I completely flip his concluding line ("And the dead nations never rise again").

All these things are not very visible in the poems in question.  They are hidden, imbricated, implicated.  This is how I understand poetry.  It's a wrestling inward toward some kind of mystical condition of utter freedom & truth-telling.  I feel a kinship with Wallace Stevens in this sense.  "Poetry is a health."

But who today would  be in a position to be even close to noticing such things in poems?   Civil War re-enactors, maybe?  Brass rubbings collectors?

It seems to me that the whole fun of poetry involves overcoming self-chosen obstacles.  At the same time, the poet should be shedding the borrowed idioms & slang & mannerisms which pass for poetry in the slick media all around us.  Obstacles help block out the glib, the cardboard.

I wrote this poem on my little "Neo" keyboard today, on a secret park bench along the Blackstone/Seekonk River.  Roger Williams & Wm. Blackstone paddled down below there just yesterday (380 yrs ago).  It's another installment, another diagram, in Ravenna Diagram.  It's full of obstacles.  It's an iceberg.

What is poetry?  I keep working on it, though it seems like a very solitary way to behave.  No one pays any attention.  But that may be for the best, in the long run.

SHADOW-BRIDGE

White swans on Blackstone

tiptoe across the water.

Wingèd liftoff.  Were

angels perched in that April midden,

or only Morpho blues?  No one

will say.  Of course

it might have been a Paris

rain... nitrate of mafia drone

in Dallas haze... an ordinary

human end.  Design

from nature, grim, benign –

the maker’s nick (encaustic jay).

This park’s a quiet hideaway.

Oaks on the steep ridge

cast a shadow-bridge

for Andes orioles.  Say,

Francisco, if you can – why

the proud builders missed

the mark?  I would have kissed

you, cuz, who embraced the sky

too soon (Psyche, Persephone...

ravined by gravity).

One eucalyptus tree

(Eeyore, Eurydice...) must (line

by limb) restore your salty skein

of handprints, raveled

veins – Eureka, you have

found me! (jade Cuzco refrain).

        6.17.15