signum of yearning

DOOM-BELL

The simple poem sets its seal on the day

(signum of yearning, lack

& bronze heartbreak).

It doesn’t create, but confirms, I say –

tacit equipoise of universe,

with roaring hearth

mirroring each heart

in Milky Way (our fiery nurse).

& of that translucent softest koinonia

the poem’s just a line.

Graven tattoo or riverine

El (whorled conscience of Columbia).

So when the Rabbi hums a restoration of all things

we understand what he means

& feel it in our bones –

sunlight in the kitchen supersedes all kings.

Liberty-tyranny-liberty; light-dark-light...

your Florentine chessboard

migrates its word-hoard

to Skye, & beyond (stern Ocean slate).

Your buoy rides the moiling salt

like a lucky pawn

become kingpin again;

Hamlet swings the doom-bell... halt,

who goes there? – solo Ophelia

hoovers up all Denmark

from her West Branch park,

& Evening Star glows like Astraea.

12.9.19

the otherness of the poem

RIVER-VEIN

The turning year brings its anniversaries.

Sunken ships in the harbor.

My fleeting image of an arbor

green on the slope at Golden Gate – Julie’s

last day (her father Jim’s birthday).

Today the sun glistens

as if through Temple linens;

pearl beyond price, merciful Gateway...

The otherness of the poem is merely

the cosine of a conversation,

Cuz.  Light trinity of sun-

moon-star, embedded in clay lips (dearly).

As America is balanced in the scales

by a feather from Byzantium,

so a Pipestone eagle-drum

summons a kingdom borne on wing-sails.

Covenantal arc of steel

at navel of the earth;

gangway to spoke-berth

coralized beyond our iron wheel.

& from a pearl-eye in the mandorla

light beams to every hamlet-

brig across the planet –

melting the blood-red wax of Danelaw

& Washington, pouring dark wine

into each muddy river-vein,

lofting all-human

fellowship again (curving J-spiral sign).

12.7.19

serpent ocarina

RED RIVER

Dante calibrated to the nth degree

the classic perihelion

of medieval civilization

simply to retrieve the smile of Biche

out of nine coils of Cerberus

& that sulfurous pit

known to Cautantowwit

who cauterizes death with raven caws.

More things in heaven & earth, Horatio.

We’re all caught up in this

wrestling match with the abyss;

there’s no detachment of the mind from woe

nor from the body’s final strife

– breathing with agony

at the crossroads (in RI) –

where Red River meets Sargasso Gulf.

So the poem of America embodies

Juliet upon the parapet

Ophelia with hairnet

(download Vertigo for double-whammies) –

the tensile span of every suicide,

waiting for someone to reach

them (eye-in-hand) – teach

HOPE to hollowed-out children (pied

serpent, surging back to Mendelssohn).

Observe the valiant

canoe, she said.  Plant

almonds, quincunctial.  Amen, amen.

6.27.19

mysteries of the oval garage

BENIGN SPECTACLES

Those benign spectacles of the Franklin Bridge

were long frozen over.

Inside & outside were

captured in a mickle mirror (garage

at the edge of Ferrara).  It wasn’t a map

of America, so much;

only Hobo’s tender clutch

(Falstaff) of Henry’s hand (old chap).

He wants to show you something.  Opens

one puffy palm, and there

tattooed in coppery-red scar

– soft oval eye, mandorla lens.

America sleeps in her own green fields.

Feminine Hamlet croons

to her, lit by Hobo-moons...

Turn back to thy La Paix, Ophelia.

That Egyptian Art-Deco monolith

of Roger, stepping off

the cliff – out of his skiff

into a void of air, the whole dream-myth...

– & it was underfoot all the time.

Like a grail-dish, or agate

eye; a lamp on a frigate

or arc of a torch, Lazarus-rhyme

or Jonah-wing.  The harbor’s safety-net

for flowery Juliet –

buoyant, incarnate

Normandie (gilding Henry’s Mayflower signet).

2.26.19

& know the place for the first time

SOME PALLADIUM

Say we come back to the place of 4

paradisal rivers, & find

it’s a limestone seed-rind

west of St. Lou.  What’s left to explore?

& that grand, sane, towering grainy-mother

is closer, more real

than royal – more U.S. steel

than Byzantine gold (your equal sister-

brother).  How did we get here?

Some palladium of Lamb-

Seeker, out on a limb,

lean-to from Providence canoe... Roger –

halfsome Grain Elevator Song, mayhap

(May 29) – his Pentecost

a Rhody smoke-hole, tossed

southwest, southwest (tornado giddy-up).

Magnanimous hand, reaching toward sunset...

Solomon, seeking Sheba;

a concord St. Columba

spied, twirling Ionian Golden Gate.

Kernel of equal daughters, equal sons –

chaste Isis of West Branch,

Virgo-Astraea in a conch...

a coracle of oracles, lifting crane bones

to life within her almond carousel;

Ophelia & Juliet

transposed to Olivet,

Henry-Persephone retrieved from Hell.

2.22.19

Dark Lady, mayhap

BRADY SEZ

Near the headwaters of Mississippi

this silver-gray sinkhole

fixed as North Pole

in frozen vortex.  Photography

captures the chill nether-life

of Lethe (Brady sez).

A trestle-bridge passes,

rusty in the distance.  A pocket-knife

of cottonwood unfolds where innocent

Ophelia submerged at last,

last fall.  Her ballast

was a blast of wrath – so violent...

collateral damage of masculine panic?

Mayhap.  Dark Lady

(all Berryman’s study)

of minstrelsy... America’s Titanic

or J. Johnson’s grace (we don’t ship

no coal) exudes black milk

for wild Melchizedek

nested in Erica-barge (molto largo trip).

Jonah-Osiris was a dove, Columbia.

Like a Burchfield winter

or Grant Wood choir

she might emerge, Jesse Ophelia –

she might molt into an Ariadne’s Crown

stars shining down

around your bulbous clown.

Jaybird of Eli, couched over Washington.

2.18.19

leaves of the cottonwood

ERMINE ROBE

The leaves of the cottonwood are silver-green,

the river flows green-bronze.

That old green man’s

gone home to his fathers now.  He’s left the scene.

Hobo will join him, by & by.

Leaves only a memory.

Childhood in Mendelssohn, Heidi...

where we drew the plow from the slough of Bye.

Home is the place we’re hailing from

forever & ever, to infinite

space – echo of minute

alien birds, mingling in one b-flat hum.

& home is familiar Elsinore

where haunted Prince Hamlet

spins the wheel – to forfeit

Ophelia, at heart’s grim core.

Time is inexorable, yet life

is sweet.  Violets fade

while a slow parade

carries the king to the tomb of his wife

down the path of a labyrinth

dark gold & green.

Where a trompette marine

strings one tone (teal-absinthe)

Ariadne hums too, as she spins

the silk safety net

round orange parapet

knotting a quipu where Time begins

                *

& Hobo apprends l’alphabet

blu.  He’s buried in summer

like acorn mummer,

coddled in hay, enfant Hamlet –

like Ionas from London (graybeard

or grey bird) cross-

dressed for her Highness

to pluck from the crowd, to be cured

(so they heard).  She’s singing there yet.

In a grey ermine robe

in the heart of the Globe

her voice, claire-voie, will penetrate

your ear.  O incommensurate

ineffable Spirit

one with your Incarnate

One, who sent Me as advocate

to make a waltzing Tree of Love

out of the union of

the twain!  Clay molten Dove

from Kiln-no-Day, soaring above

sky-wells of Ocean Stream, I AM

your mandorla of light

& joy – your mirror-bright

bee’s honey-eye – multiocular OM

circumferencing the whisper-dome

breathing Hagia Sophia

through most-human sigh

urging love’s coracle to kingdom come.

5.19.17

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

we were there at the opening

Minnesota Symphony (head in the dear lights)

SACRE DU PRINTEMPS
                                                  if a Greek could see our games...

Stravinsky, Sacre du Printemps.

We were there at the opening,

brimming Finn conducting

momentum – thunderclaps & stomps

revive   tired 20th century

Apollinaire   in wings

puffing peace pipe rings

heart-knots   knock-knock (really

Thunderburnt acceleration).

Sacajawea, limping

the cornfield, keening

high lonesome   milky halcyon

mother-of-pearl   a sacrifice

of Mendelssohn   &

pirouettes   rose islands of

melodious romance   (deep ice

instead).  The violence inbred

in Gothic bones   Poe’s

charnel House of Horrors

under clerestory lines   All dead,

alas   Jessie   Ophelia

sweet dark-eyed river-

daughter   (Prospero,

Moses)   a scent   selah

shelled corn   shellacked

by hangrin’ guilty guile

in lime   hid   laid   Ile

fit you   Why?   Hack’d

               *

be the hackers   ice cracking

at the end   some munster

python swallowing your

Sonny Man (ut one thug lacking)...

Little mote, little penny, tiny

splinter in your eye

Ford Theatre   The King

Must Die   in Memphis   on a balcony

lowly motel   or mangy inn

It had to be done, someone

must’ve said   musty felon

or gypsy   jew-boy   coon

& we all in on it   even FBI

even Adlai Stevenson

some historical person

Hubert Humphrey (or I’ll be J)

– the pressure-cooker of The War

to End All   Wilson   Geraldine

Fitzgerald   Cymbeline

or Everybud   the boar-hound or

the bore   deflect the arrows of

your .44 (or .45)   Merved

orange Grifter   Vertigo

(the movie)   someone’s flic’v love

home run   9th inning   must be

some kinda way outa here

I don’t want to be the deer

in the headlights, Maggie   help me

3.30.17

Iris was a messenger

ROYAL FLUSH

This winter light is innocent,

salted with snow.  Downstream

from Franklin Bridge, steam

lifts by gawky crane, afloat

like nautical giraffe (all finished

now).  Henry Hobo

seeps his moonshine so

far down... devoutly to be wished,

that well-being.  Dante was agile

in the Tuscan sun, seeking

also – her flame leaking

through trumpet vine (light, fragile

grace).  Men search for causes

& neglect their ends.

Ophelia’s betrayal bends

into a sea of stinging roses

where Earth replies with Mendelssohn

& Paradise was felt

before her deck was dealt

(52 weeks of sun – Apollinairean

royal flush).  She seeks you too,

his glinting Beatrice.

Iris on her way

from infinite mercy (blue

rondure, flecked with gold, aswirl

from blazing central star)

brings home to where you are –

in thicket night, a glowing coal.

2.6.17

only Ophelia remained

AGATE LEVIATHAN

A little Hamlet, on remote planet

in Denmark, was troubled

with Mors – he stumbled

as against a stone, to understand it.

Pebbles flung from anxious Hell

pinged against his helmet;

a pearl-toothed kismet

glimmered from the poisoned well.

It was a union greatly to be wished.

Its whorl unfathomable

shone... like Luna in a fable,

agate Leviathan (unfished).

A curse enclosed it, like a shell;

a nightmare of the sea –

a beast called Jealousy

clutched, rang it like a bell

from bottomlands.  It was his grail.

The angry Minotaur

grunted through Knossos-tar

in the crusted mirror – you must fail.

Denmark was full of hardened criminals.

Only Ophelia remained

to pluck the sweet Beltane

of innocence (from sordid halls).

Hamlet stepped up, to meet his fate.

He smiled into the teeth

of Sheol – sensed beneath

basalt of gladness, past debate.

11.24.16 

cold reflective casket

NEGATIVE AURA

They’re readying the great Webb Telescope

to spy on deepest space,

remotest time; a Falcon-Ace

of 18 hexagons – unfolding envelope

or massive sunflower of minstrel mirrors,

golden Land o’Lakes

lenses.  Infinity takes

a very cold reflective casket (yours,

Ophelia).  Meanwhile, down here below,

some Leopardian teller or

Poe-boy bookseller

must trace Columbian fall of sparrow

into bleakest night, last

trumpery.  O quintessence

of hollow volume!  Hence,

3-Card Monty – hateful guest!

As if the door to honey-milky

Providence were locked,

foredoomed.  A thousand shocks

in sovereign succession, so quickly

hammered to an Irish skull...

Earthquake, heartbreak.

Ophelia is in the lake –

my center sinks to muddy soil.

Sun gleams in fireplace of camera,

her little room on high –

her lampblack like a sty

in prism orange (strange negative aura).

11.22.16

the Ariadne pattern

INGLE EYE

A wild white rose at the side of the house

bloomed just today

like the city of Dioce

on green clover stairway   Spouse

Sister   in clusters of stars

Who are you?   Magdala

Stone   mosaic   of gala

winefest   little swirl of squares

corn-maze   around an ingle eye

your single sigh

the keystone   by-&-by

(little fiddlehead fern   turning pern-

kernel   the axle of the ax)

as Icarus   burning wax

falls   cataracts

into Grotto J   (relax)

on Chartres nave-pavement   discern

the Ariadne pattern

that angry monks   learn

magnanimity   & turn

again   as falcons gyre   into

the sun   (mild   smile

on earth   mile upon mile)

the Son of Man   is fashioned true

whisper those lips   of windblown rue

Jessie Ophelia   your

leaves of grace   empowered

to plow   deep rose   to emerald blue

5.31.16

Yellow-gold forsythia

TWO CIRCLES

Down by the spring river, tossing sticks

in prehistoric Mizz,

my Jordan – little Isis-

canoes, or Ferrarese six-

wheelers; in my mind’s darkroom

recalling you – Love’s raven-

haired sybil (guardian

at the Rock’s entrance).  Your gloom

when my father’s birthday wheeled around

each April.  The yellow-gold

forsythia enfold

your mother’s grave, who died... O sound

those flowery depths, Ophelia –

and rise again!  He was

a good man – rays

of intellectual Amor blessed his day;

he might have walked her from that grave.

A little light only,

through camera oscura...

you know.  You showed me her cave

in San Francisco’s spare kitchen –

where a thin light-blade

infiltrates the Maid

so Piero’s hypno-sarabande might spin

anew (red cedar, blue spruce, evergreen).

Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with

Two Circles... one light-heavy scythe

defines this wheel’s circumference (unseen).

4.12.16