IRON WHEEL
Her fingers fondled Red Wing clay
on the circling wheel
into Northwoods bowl
or Mexican flowerpot. Wheels, say,
within wheels... microcosmic canoes,
Arks of the Covenant...
even Charon’s punt,
Henry (we who have passed
over Lethe). The woman with child
in her apocalyptic
mandorla, chased by Dick
the Drag to the edge of the wild
(up north, near the Boundary Waters,
in the Iron Range, near
Itasca). Fresco a veneer
across Ravenna beams – Jordan River’s
sleepy patron god. Sort of like Hobo
witnessing the fire-dove
skim down Cottonwood Cove
& settle on the shepherd kid... just so...
but I just don’t know.
Iconoclasm sets in,
considering we’re human –
liable to make it up as we go.
The otherness of the Someone.
Your friend, your judge
(merciful – but won’t budge,
won’t fudge the facts). Solomon
petitioned humbly for wisdom,
sensing the dire burden
beyond each king’s ken :
the destiny of Jerusalem
*
under a blood moon of violent men
& the everyday mayhem
the grinding paroxysm
of atrocious cruelties – shifting pain
to the weak (convenient scapegoat,
ordinary poor).
Even blindfold Synagoga
might remember something critical, something
our mosaic Pantocrator forgot.
A little gray-brown moth
settles on Hobo’s mouth,
like a fingertip. Hush, seraph. That
maybe we are Hagia Sophia
with a million eyes.
Solomon was wise
to be humble before the Shekinah.
& Hobo was a mumbling bumbler
more like a river than a man
more like clay than person.
& Thunderbird was a rumbler
in Red Wing, churning the rusted wheel
until it sparked like gold;
helping her to fold
the wet clay of America on steel
braces... evenly rotating... Source
to Delta... Sea-Rose
to Golden Gate... flows
through the arch... Mud-Morse...
7.12.19
