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

with pigeon feathers for stone walls

SPRING BREEZE

As in one of those primitive

Sienese masters,

a pained St. Francis

fits inside a pastel arch.  Give

me your poor, your huddled masses

yearning to breathe free...

Over there stands Liberty

vaunting her mural crown (tresses

awash beneath W.P.A. murals).

Sister to Columbia,

dove-principezza

with pigeon feathers for stone walls.

They’re tripping a Troy-town maze

around the cave entrance;

priming some freelance

to buzz the Republic’s toxic haze.

Where Everyman is king

no man is king.

To the sheep he’ll cling,

to the underside of everything.

Like the span of a soft retina

in Providence, RI.

Like the women nearby

when they crucified the guy, selah.

Man or woman, brother, sister...

hearken to the wind.

Spring breeze, unwind –

a breath of renaissance, tongue-twister.

12.13.18