on your dark retina

SEA-FROTH

The soft touch of watercolor

like a moist afterthought

on your dark retina.

The comeliness of ballet dancer

uprightness of innocent angel

her glance prematurely sad

– unfolding her fan of mustard

gold (butterfly wings on purple balsa)

beneath rough branches of jack pine

& beside the air conditioner,

a sunless window (in its lunar

TV efflorescence).  With her fine

naiad brow, brimming with thought

& the dignity of her wings

like a daughter of Memphis king

or mother… Isis or Hathor (Thoth

merging with dappled river pattern

yet again).  & in upper

right-hand corner a minor

violet cloud, a miniature icon –

Notre Dame (unburnt as yet?) – or

Statue of Liberty?  Unclear,

inchoate… like right now, here

in this charcoal-smoky, somewhere-

possible America – suffering glare

of phosphor-bomb campaigns

& camouflage engines –

blind canvas (some cimetière

                  *

marin) of noon.  & as the sun descends

west of the granite capital

& you sense (as the ineffable

arc of those feathers, wafting, bends

to rose Pacific horizon) the limpid

gloom of freedom’s evening

then she will be gathering

fragment-limbs of her beloved…

Isis, young dark dancer by the Nile.

Shades of live oaks,

holm oaks, holly oaks…

green Acorn Kings of Hollywood… will

stay awhile.  The restoration of the earth

will be a Morris dance –

as (in his happy trance)

the young king will relight the hearth

under the aegis of that Providence

kind Williams’ hand held forth

over the sea-froth

chasm of an Ocean State (whence

every liberty proceeds).  I mean

the heart’s imagination

of dove-divination,

when prancing St. Jeanne rose again

from dusty repetition of revenge

into a coracle of Union –

her canoe of sun-flotation,

Hobo’s freeway cloverleaf (Stonehenge).

2.21.20

like a transparent crane-bone flute

UPSTART FLARE

Under Siberian pale-blue ice

tiny frozen spirals form.

Where memories swarm

in whirlpools, counter-clockwise –

Hobo spring of vagrant musing.

Follow me down, she

murmurs, toward the sea –

limpid ocean floor of everything.

The coil of wet clay tightens, slowly.

Welterings of catkin passions

merge beneath an old man’s

glaze (welded to an osier orrery).

It is the Mississippi bottomland

of errant, febrile heart.

Hot kiln, or upstart

flinty flare; centripetal lampstand.

The bare simplicity of San Francesco

floats like a transparent

crane-bone flute –

an air set like a feather in the flow,

a bubble in the world of local trials.

Love the Lord your Wakan Tanka

& your neighbor, Raven Caw-

Caw – this call melts all frozen wiles.

So the clay wheel rotates slowly,

turns inexorably north

south east... & forth

to high Pacific gate – lofting her Liberty.

12.20.19

on Veterans' Day

OLD CANOE

They walked on the beach on Veterans’ Day,

Henry & Alex, 11-

11. Father & son. 

A peaceful drone from the Pacific, hey

ey yo.  Henry, oh Henry, what

have you done?  Broken

the lawful bonds of Christen-

dom.  Limps toward Yehoshephat,

your son, your son (beneath milky

ocean spray).  Laborious

struggle to restore justice...

the father’s crimes his legacy.

Innocence precedes the chaste

memorials of same;

children entering the game

adore that grass, to which they haste.

Endicott ripped the Cross out of

the Union, Jack – inspired

by Rog Wms (hired

Ajax?).  Puritanical ab ovum

back in Topsfield (prior Zaccheus

Gould).  Desecrations

rule the day.  Someone’s

idea of revenge, rebellion... us?

The Narragansetts have a word

for youthful arrogance

(I forget).  Once

Henry walked another beach (Rhode

                     *

Island) lugging remorse (mule, dunce).

The heavy waves pounded.

Ocean-soul sounded.

Cordelia’s quipu-crown (silence).

The madness works itself out (&

might end, someday) –

the greedy Boar will slay

& slay, until his tiny orange hand

is stayed.  Complacent cows of Bashan

wallow on the slopes

of Washington (one hopes

Starbucks will runneth over, son)

until berserkers finish slaughtering

(but that was in another

coffeeshop – it wasn’t her).

Columbia keens for her offspring

in Ramada Inn, who are no more.

Henry Oakillas, huffy

Henry, O... what now?  I

do not know.  To the bridge?  Claymore?

More clay?  Sword shall pierce

your own soul, Mary.

The air, soft here – sea-

air (light of a sweet lightness).

The chaste beginnings of Thanksgiving

in the myth, in the dream...

on the shore, by beam

of some old canoe.  Hoping, hoping.

11.12.18

evening of the year

TIRED HAND

November is the evening of the year.

Peasants in Bruegel scenes,

old Hobo has-beens

cluster by each barnyard bonfire.

Smells of farm & mill & stream,

the salt of drying fish.

Legends of Gilgamesh,

Leviathan.  Earth’s drowsy dream

wherein these van der Weyden faces

peer, like wildflowers

(like elemental creatures).

Matrix of sky & sea places,

of perishable limestone prints

from whence a soul emerges

smiling... Demiurge’s

horsehair, flickering (Francesca’s hints).

Medieval bread & wine of things.

Cascade of bridges over

other bridges – river

washing under massive rings.

The solidarity of timebound

beasts, breathing together

under whip, rein, tether.

Muddy, between Arch & Mound

looms... pregnant with Spiritu.

What Piero knew,

Bruegel & Jasper too –

shade-palm, surrounding you

                    *

& me – stretching toward Pacific blue.

I layer watercolors so,

over crepuscular canoe

hid in Italian garage (one almond clue).

The limestone waterfalls in Rimini

like tears across a scallop-

sign.  The curtains drop,

the veil gives way... a human unity

of suffering is all our play.

Da Vinci, with tired hand

limns one command –

love one another, every day.

For we are one.  A multitude,

personified.  Benevolent

Ancient of Days bent

each into the mirror’s flood,

together – riverflow of heart-

veins from the earth

welling to fiery hearth –

lenticular sunset, plangent cloud-art.

So spinning from primordial rose

the golden maize of Chartres

guides you to its Artist...

Daedalus, not Minotaur; Grace

Ravlin, not some puppet-master

in the Kremlin.  Shadow

of Mona Lisa grin... you

rise before the fall (Easter).

11.10.17

one last hurdle, Amelia

DANTE CHAIR

The gazebo’s grime-filmed mosquito net.

The black chain-link fence

in backyard Providence

climbed by Clem (mock-orange? Nyet).

Elegant quincunx in Cyrus-orchard.

Natural calculations

for dames in Netherlands –

to sieve the flux of spacetime (hard

homework).  Oxidized old photographs

curl to brown negatives.

A lime-warp cosmos

rolls up like a scroll of epitaphs

on fire.  So memory seems to curdle

too.  Gödel’s fetal pose

(knot of incompleteness).

Here’s the Pacific! – one last hurdle,

Amelia.  Archival snapshot

lost at sea...  your back

on deck, maybe?  Ack-

ack survivor?  Unknown soldier?  Dot

gone a-whaling vast expanse,

revived in some albumen

album.  Icarhea, return –

amaze us.  Dad is dead.  All US

mourns you, lass.  Jesus the airman

in a Paris dream   floats

through rainbow dust-motes

light checkmate   first the grain

                *

then the ear   then the grain

of wheat   in the heart

of your ear   lost art

of flying flute   solo   Dakota plain-

song   Black Elk   pilot-fish

naturally Christian

(more so than mission-

school)   so dream your spirit-wish

when the brutal tide of inhumanity

recedes   we will stand

by the shores of Mini-land

bullets   baby hummingbirds   no-see-

ums now   old Green Man chair

of Old Man North   unseen

now too   copper-sheen

bright mold of Liberty   still there

like curule seat of Caesar (Jules)

a Dante chair   Mom spied

in the PX   at Salvation Army

& dragged back home   April Fools!

It’s very rocky   in Armenia

an Abyssinian ark   sleeps

in Paul Bunyan steeps

a Tuscan nurses   meek Elephantea

with yellow ivory   fantasia

folk tales of the sun

shining   for everyone

through rose-glass coracles (acacia)

7.12.17

Sunset (Mississippi River at St. Anthony Falls)

unfurling Providence

ANGE D’OR

Pythagoras & Aristotle

felt both stars & sun

move (by persuasion

of love) around the atlatl

of the Pole – slow sarabande

of heart’s desire (my soul

pines for your solo Yule

just so, trompette marine).  &

though we scoff now, Harry,

your wedding dance is just

a veiled illusion – dust

on cosmic rewind, arbitrary –

yet those ripples on the strand

projecting gracefully

sound waves of sea

through particles of sand

put me in mind of relativity,

so that behind this mesh

of silken crossweave rush

soft murmurs (hush little baby,

don’t you cry)...  & a kind face

beyond divisibility

windy invisibility

ghostly ellipse of human race

gathers in gravity & mass

like a cloud-pebble

or magnified Hubble-

infinitesimal, lifted by windlass

                 *

into a masque of morning glory

from the outer darkness

with a rose compass

to inward salience (galactic story

of grave milky equilibrium

outlasting mirror-war

of swollen Minotaur

to bind the wounds with honey-balm).

The Earth’s unfurling Providence.

Slow-forming pearl

beneath the gray whorl

of a clay-worn shell – immense

agate of Agape, threaded

with light gold fleece

around a centerpiece

of Paradise (salt bread

& wine out of a stone casket).

Indomitable almond

branch, a blooming wand

cut for a lilac shoot, whose trumpet-

vine leans like a flinty mule

against vain headwinds

to Pacific ends –

vast azure of a wingspan’s rule,

bright Gate of international

ange d’or (meek door

for lambs, forevermore).

So sighs your shell, antiphonal.

2.9.17

alongside the canoe

SHIP’S EYE

John Slocum fell into a swoon

in the sea-tinged woods

by Puget Sound; his words

of hope shook many Shaker men

out of their sins.  Sparks fly far

from cedar blaze – the sea

booms in a ship’s eye

lashed by yardarm to the polestar.

It’s not the size of the cosmos

but the color of the scales,

gilded when dawn pales

rippling on ice-floes

across the horizon, back to Ocean –

over hide rooftops

sun-parched corn crops

in the jungle (Squaxin, Galilean).

When Davy the Song Prince pranced

alongside the canoe

Maggie saw what she knew

was hers, & grew embarrassed –

yet her almond eye looks to the sea

& the song endures.  A stone

fell from turtle-grey heaven –

the flare of a meteor, a mystery;

an infinite cloud-bank shaped like wing

a feather of ring-dove

signifying love

left brush-marks down by Slocum Spring.

9.26.16

her smile shall win

GAZEBO SKEIN

Sultry evening in the Twin Cities.

The earth.  My mother’s kiln

stoked like Jersey landfill

with Dante’s willful souls – at ease

like oil on fire.  My moss-green vines

climb the gazebo skein.

Oblomov lived in vain

& died, sweet gentleman.  My light declines.

Oblomov dreamt a febrile dream,

icon of idle summer

grace.  Her lips murmur

& tickle his ear – Awake, Sunbeam...

Dante, shaken, shudders with Love

& epileptic ecstasy;

parallactic Ocean Sea

& shadowy Argo up above,

Emperor Henry on chariot-throne

of Rhodian charity.

A band of silver-grey

light-thread knots chords – the drone

of universal B-flat (Kingdom Come

with trombones, clarinet

& flute) – At Last.  FIAT.

Oblomov lifts his balding dome,

his heavy lashes... orange twin

pillars hold one Ariadne-

loop.  Pacific naiad?

Juliet?  La Paix?  Her smile shall win.

7.21.16

Remembrances of 1865 (so beginneth Ravenna Diagram Bk 6)

SEA WASH

To turn your glance back, eastward, from

the height of a great orange

pier (Home on the Range

in your ear) – immense Pacific foaming

behind you... like a lookout in a crow’s-

nest – a single burning glass,

a golden eagle-eyepiece

taking in a continent.  Up to Rose

Island Lighthouse (Narragansett Bay) –

to the byzantine capitol dome

in Providence, whose gnomon

is a gold harpooner – looking away

back west, toward you.  Photoshot (still).

As when the sun stops briefly

over Jericho, before they

blow the trumpets, & the walls fall;

as if you stood before a Peto

still-life (intricate

& accurate memento

of complete stigmata-scrimshaw hero).

I hear another sea wash, sighing

round salt emerald shores.

Columba’s Iona (wars

far off, now) laved with dying kings’

repentance-prayers (touch of blessing

for the wounded flutes

of clay).  So lift your lute,

sad Frisco boy.  She’s leeward (glistening).

2.12.16

Drowsy motion of the river R

FRESH CRUST

The immense raincloud stretched like serpent

or shadow of raven-

wing, on an evening horizon

over the Pacific, just past the unspent

abyss of Golden Gate.  Only here

ice scales an ever-brooding

Mississippi – black Earth blood-

stream (like Nile in winter mirror).

My Neva-Neva land folds history

into an origami crane –

an ever-moving terrapin

lapping on a chain (of clay).

A flower clambers from those rings –

a million-pillowed peacock

Rose, whose eyes flock

van der Weyden faces (channelings

of worm-warp smiles).  Lyre-kings

hung like Christmas bulbs

from every thorn; their clubs

thronged in night circles, chorusing;

the Word was crumbling, in a whirlpool

(Ocean River, circulating

echoing Hector ring)...

‘til Joey the Calabrian (my cool

collaborator) sketched an eagle

plummeting – flipped

up a fresh crust, dipped

in wine & snow – lifted his bugle...

1.7.16