in the dawn mirror

SINGLE SPOKE

These quiet late winter days.  My mother

lies in her small bed.

The past is not restored

but rows to its island across the water.

I see it in the distance, there –

dark rocks, pines wrapped

in mist.  What happened

to those springing years?  Vibrant affair

of VISTA volunteers… Rhode Island

skipping in my early heart.

JFK’s Newport.

A tiny sea-casket of azure, sand

in the dawn mirror of a rose lighthouse

casting Roger’s heart’s eye-

beam – his Providential replica

of conscience-liberty (human Cosmopolis).

You elevate my Minnesota grain

toward your red-violet wine

welding human & divine

on the river’s leaping arch – then

paddle further… through green pillars

from Columbia to Gravesend,

Pocahontas Williams (raven-

haired pilot for milky stars).

Where the Wain of Charles is chartered

to an evergreen holm oak –

your Ocean State a single spoke

spinning my reel & sarabande, wholehearted.

3.10.20

driving around Kenwood

BLUE CLAY

Driving around Kenwood, the memories.

In the mist.  October

leaves me almost sober

(maples blushing maroon, umber).  The bees

have mostly flown to sleep (in the calyx

of a sunflower).  You’ll find

soft traces of the mind

in whorls of thumbprints – Red Wing phoenix

lifted out of blue clay & industrial (okay

now what?).  Zone of quiet

emotional measurement.  Whit-

mind, informing each & all.  Today

the Mississippi is a feathered serpent,

mirror of oak & maple,

cottonwood.  Oak-apple

galls the rotund roundhead tyrant –

harboring the charismatic prince

whose mother & bride is

Espiritu Santo, Sophia’s

father & son (green acorn salience).

The canoe downstream is almost invisible

like a pair of wooden lips

whispering across the gaps –

a miniature ark, whose rainbow burble

bubbles back her own Churnagogue wake;

she is the radiant candle

glowing through the cupped hand,

the clay grail mending each American mistake.

10.7.19

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

May Goulding at her Negus launch

UNFOLDING SHEEP

So the double wheels of the Venn diagram

(a kind of astigmatism from

from Ravenna to home)

mesh in a translated spacetime –

East to West become Rome-Byzantium

Greek to Italian Catholic

Orthodox – majestic

Chartres to homespun NOLA Notre Dame.

I’m working on a bridge, sez Hobo.

Under that nature morte

(Peto, Brown Decades) – what

the flower of liberty became... oh no.

The lilies on the funeral train

(Gould was an engineer).

Abe Lincoln’s here –

great Julius Caesar’s ghastly coin

(one lethal copper penny).

The wheel slowly revolves.

Agony gradually resolves.

The quiet sepulcher (Gesthemane)

became a bargaining chip at the Crusades.

What molts the World-Ruler

from Ides of March to your

sweat-April soul-showers (the blade’s

Excalibur) is some indomitable eagle-

heart – bald as the snowfields

north of International Falls,

wide as the river south of Angola.

                    *

You mark the justice of the refugee,

the accurate perception

of the slave.  Moses-pontoon

or old Italian canoe... it’s simply

the humble carpenter’s sharp eye

encapsulated in a bead

of honey (life’s high meed) –

gold oval of air, its quiddity.

Like throne of Isis in West Branch,

or Grant Wood making space

for Herbie Hoover’s birthplace –

like May Goulding at her Negus launch

(a cup of ceremony from deep

Ethiopia) for Henry Flower –

blooming nom-de-plume, your

lambent, flammable, unfolding sheep.

Rhode Island waits for you,

Son of the Evening Star;

little acorn-czar,

your birthday rhymes with Manitou –

palladium of shimmering mosaic

merging with river-clay

to meet Oak-Apple Day

for restoration (JFK).  A wake, awake!

It’s Rooster Henry, dusting off

the grave.  It’s everyone

thinking the train’s long gone –

finding an acorn in a hollow trough.

3.3.19

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

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

serene enchantment

ROYAL SEAL

Springtime earth bears a secret promise

for that unknown child

somewhere, today – mild

summons of the midnight stars

foretell the coming of her Magi, too.

May burgeons toward her

flowery grand fanfare

beneath its vault (red, lilac, blue) –

a royal seal of lilac coronation;

within that dome’s one

multiocular panopticon

prophetic voices merge in exaltation –

serene enchantment of perennial life

blooming toward light itself

(O fragrant almond staff

sprouting sweetness – beyond all strife).

The infant nested in a great oak’s shade

smiles in soft seaborne air.

Ocean will prepare

her Restoration Day – as you were made

in the beginning, so shall you be again.

Shining in Paradise,

where all the rivers rise;

gemstones of blazing men & women

awakening from mind’s blindness.

Under an azure-orange arch

they sail... grail-search

fulfilled – Love’s everflowing happiness.

5.24.18

round which we merry go

LIGHT GLANCES

Now, at dusk, the early lilacs

breathe out their scent.

Tired crabapple’s bent

limbs burst into a climax-

galaxy of blossoms, pink & white –

rhyming those slight cloud-

petals overhead

like Botticelli’s passionate

notations for the Paradiso

(Beatrice’s dancing

flame-spirits, candescing

in a last heaven-crescendo).

Old splendor of May-month springs

anew.  None shall judge her.

Like Osip’s meteor

flung suddenly through Saturn’s rings

Ophelia steps from a weedy break

wearing Ariadne’s crown –

grace, honor & renown

clothe her again, out of elm-book

of Primavera-life – primordial

Persephone, sharing

one diamond ring

(soul’s Solomonic seal, octagonal).

The river’s profile of limestone

reflects its lambent flow.

Each wave curls now

light glances toward one flint Person

                    *

the intellect sees through the show

of leafy cottonwood sheen

(black limbs lean toward one

point round which we merry go).

It’s personal, in a fleeting, refugee

sense, mumbles Hobo.

The stone beyond Cosmo.

The source of lightning & oak tree –

where little Henry hid one day

like Bonnie Charlie in a bole

of mossy acorn-meal.

The soul is preternatural, he say.

Soul is King, & Queen.  Mary

floresces rose, in bloom

beneath almond moon...

Hamlet, Ophelia marry.

Adamantine chair of motherlode...

gravitational pull

of con vexed out of Hell.

Adam’s evening (nails in road).

Looming in the linen of the dream,

the dawn fleece of time...

the scapegoat’s crime,

the victim’s cornerstone (walled

without seam into apex of dome).

This your chink of light

through the long jail night.

Your Camelot (milk-train kingdom).

5.5.17

the family woodpecker

STEEP RAVINE

Quiet today along the river.

In the steep ravine, only

the Morse drum-talky

of the family Woodpecker

interrogates the oaks with hollow

query.  Where are you,

worm?  Job’s blue.

Ice-packed for the long, Nile-slow

Egyptian winter, thick with Pharaoh-

dolour, pyramidical –

ridiculous cyclical

suffering, encased in snow.

It’s not his fault, & he will tell you so.

O, if these canyons were

only in a book!  We’re

leaving – desiccated, delicate.  Don’t go.

The poet has her humors – she’s

devoted to them, wholly.

Lear’s wise Fool, she’ll

follow Boaz carrying the heaves

out loud, in sheaves.  The polis, too,

be uncobbled knowledge.  What

vaguely familial knot

of rivals, bickering horseshoe

favors for grubs, is this?

Not Man-Eat-Too-Much

or Minotaur – no, such

rapacity’s reserved for the abyss

                *

of Pole Star Netherworld (Étoile

du Nord).  Little Crow

stood there, y’know –

with the Red Wing clan, in a potted bowl

of leers.  Stood with the scapegoat

as a prophet should – charisma

whirling in the twister-eye

(magenta bronze, the serpent-calumet).

Who sees him sky-hole in this mess?

Light imperturbable

as Mississippi burble

through a transparent lamb-lattice –

the holeness of that holy garment

parti-colored Joseph wore,

shellacquered semaphore

way under limestone sediment

of painful jealousies & wounded hate.

Her singular vocation,

musing on desolation

til scarred earth-pangs abate –

bored by a dream of early days.

Canoe of Camelot,

Lake-Lady’s thunder-knot...

the old bare dance, woodpecker maze

of placid Oak-Gal Day – a writ of spring

(St. Vitus 1913

Paris Corn Maiden)

that joins Creation to Thanksgiving.

3.9.17

experimental Restoration Play

RAVEN-SPELT

Cedar shade of Galilee,

Aesculapian shepherd

staff of serpent-

skin, shed (leafing royalty

in vernal memory).  Magdala

Stone of good deeds done

O spouse of rustic sun

& witness won... lowly Messiah

come & gone (& come again).

Time flowers on the lips

& salty fate slips

into diamond lantern (homespun

dream of overflowing glee) – a shout

of joy from a windblown seed

of newness sown (whorled

Jubilee) – canoe-galleon, afloat

round Milky Road (unquenchable

Eternity) – that lights

gold Magna Carta rights

welded in smiling crucible

of Manitou.  So on this day

Canonicus & Charles II

framed (raven-spelt) new

Charter, for primordial Way –

experimental Restoration Play

within green cedar

fane – firm oaken chair

of planetary cheer (our Ripening Day).

7.8.16

Roger Williams Memorial, Prospect Terrace, Providence

* Note : on this day in 1663, King Charles II of England signed the charter creating the new colony of Rhode Island.  Written, and sponsored (in London) by Roger Williams and Thomas Clarke, the charter pioneered a new form of government, founded on principles of religious toleration and popular sovereignty.

Royal Oak

A few years ago I began digging into various writings on anthropology, from The Golden Bough forward & back.  One of many things which fascinated me was the resemblance between archaic kingship rituals, from around the world, and the rites of Christianity.  It's a strange way of putting it, I know - but in some ways it seems as though the early Christians had struck a taproot leading back into human prehistory.  The story of Christ's "kingdom" (or anti-kingdom) and sacrifice - his giving of his "body & blood" in the Eucharist - was like a reflection of prehistoric human social rituals.  The King always "stood for" the God, or the Source of all goodness : he was the channel of the life-force (anthropologist A.M. Hocart expressed this quasi-governmental role of archaic kingship in his classic study Kings and Councillors).

It's as if the Biblical testimony - itself stretching back into earliest Judaism, offering a cosmological picture of the source of life - was reflected in a kind of "royal seal" or template : a gold coin with two sides, showing Past and Future...

MOSES-KAYAK

The soul’s a kind of mirror, they

used to say – the old

mystical sheepfold;

you’ll find it on baptism day

refracted in an oval, seen

through water.  Incidental

angels rim the cave-wall

(all elongate, string-bean

apparitions, seraphim)

till harvest ripens

& a scythe descends

dividing wheat from empty flim-

flam... everlasting Judgement

Day.  That Galilean

gospeller, Samoan

wrestler, flipped oval Testament

into tight spring – a seventh wave

reversed the Jordan-flow,

the eye of Moses-kayak now

recursive back to Adam’s grave

(SW of Lake Victoria,

no doubt).  My Mirror Lakes

were Mendelssohn out-takes,

rehearsals for a Globe-historia –

the young king, hidden in an oak tree

still, waits for his mother’s

signal – climbs from a mummer’s

moth-shroud – floats to the Sea...

9.18.15

Descendant of the Royal oak at Boscobel House (courtesy of Wikipedia)

The latest Dionysus

TWO THREADS

Rite of Spring twirls out of Paris,

1913 (tight-coiled

as a Springfield

bullet-train).  Apollinaire’s

the latest Dionysus – tranquil

eye of Martian hurricane,

versifying inane

Europe’s Grande Guerre Nonpareil.

He will die too (head-wound).

Le Roi Ubu est mort.

Two threads, athwart

a catenary arc (gray ground,

blue sky) form slow raincloud;

two notes, or three

make melody

like a wedding day, a shimmer-shroud

of mutuality.  The King’s

in Memphis for the evening;

Queen’s busy restoring

an old carol (Acorn Tree-Ring);

Lincoln’s going to the theater

of the war tonight.

Curvature of sharp flint

Choctaw cheekbones, at the center

of the storm – a smiling ridge

of tears.  Pocahontas

cartwheels one meticulous

J² = Mx/Mn x 1132 (thread-bridge).

9.12.15

Today's helpful hint re previous post : this is Memorial Day in USA; Oak Tree Day or Restoration Day in UK; Rhode Island Statehood Day; (& my b-day).

 13

  
 The sound-seed fell from high
 like a sharp effigy   in the frozen air
 a figurehead forced   through the narrows
 of cliff-clay   and it tolls for thee, Henry

  
 (copperhead stretched out for   seven
 years of seven years from   charlie horse
 to roundhead) and   Cuánto catorce
 ha habido en la existenca!  When

  
 you enter into eternity   without a garment
 in my beginning is   a Lincoln sheep
 my end   the long Canadian geese-chase
 from a faux point   to   the true target:

  
 as a man with an enormous bleak millstone
 wrapped like Ouroboros around his neck
 is cast into the sea   (do you ken
 yet, Charlie Brown?)   for offending

  
 the little green one   Qué deber,
 qué cortar y qué taju   de memoria
 a memoria   en la pestana!
 Your endless shield like a rabid

  
 Caesar   that rings like brass
 without harmony   when you enter
 into eternity   it tolls for thee   so turn
 again and turn   Charlie   from Barabbas

  
 toward   the other Caesar   (Atahuallpa
 on the scaffold   like curled-up   Orpheus,
 your father)   to the green cap   furling
 hidden from roundheads in   the palace

  
 of an oak curling   from Charles to Charles
 and from brown to delta clay   a sound
 seed   planted   on a pinpoint spearhead
 green   for growing   scroll   to   scroll

       
                                   2.14.2000

I started this wild memoir jag back on Oct. 7th, after posting an image of the young Vladimir Nabokov. So I'm ending it with an image of Will Shaksper. The 2 of them share a birthday, April 23rd. This is the English National Day, I think; traditionally St. George's Day, patron saint of both England & Russia.

(I was born on May 29th, which is Restoration Day (or Oak Tree Day) in England.)