its talons are for real

RAPTOR-SEAL

We moved through a smog thicker than coal-dust

filled with angry cries.

I couldn’t recognize

my guide, only her humming through a gust

of wind.  The moon was a copper disk

printed faintly rust-green

over that desolation –

like a hovering fingerprint, a mask

for Queequeg, Abraham – a penny

for Liberty, glinting

from the dark well (hinting

freedom, good will, where there wasn’t any).

A doubloon for Mammon flickered so

below shrouds of the Pequod –

many an aching tattoo would

echo in blood that talent for woe.

Marine Corps taps (trompette marine).

Memory shapes emblems

like coral wreaths... drums

weave light fleece mandala, copper green

& gold.  Like an iron spring wound

taut into infinity,

one Mendelssohn memory

emerges from my swampy ground –

the ancient plow we found, Heidi

& dragged back home together

through April weather

(iris blooming like a peacock’s eye

                    *

out of dead bulbs that never die).

The tarnished metallurgy

Iron Age surgery

some Raven-shaman shall (with high

& fluting Light Warlpiri) bring

might lift our eyes again

to one galactic common

wheel, that voices in Ark-Argo sing –

Hagia Sophias in Yezidi throng

to harmonize their peacock

tongues, & nations flock

to chime each footnote of a brazen gong.

The Word flies backward so, before Babel.

Its talons (like a raptor-

seal of olive-arrows) are

for real – to carry us from Hell

to Paradise, fledged by free will;

its almond eye (above

the pyramid) is Love –

forever fair & kind & true, until

the splendor of infant Creation

shines like Sacajawea

from green Equadoria –

justice & liberty combine

in meek Franciscan poverty

to weld the planetary

flora into Primavera

sunlight-gold... bright solidarity.

3.21.17 

Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 3.21.17

among four pines

ABSOLUTE ZERO

The grey coal cars thunder slowly

over the rust-orange bridge

again.  & I pledge

allegiance to their gravity,

to the stern trumpet of the train horn

as they go.  Down the street

Grandpa’s brick Paraclete

among four pines awaits the morn

(birthday, today).  That carpenter’s

clear eye – a level’s bubble –

gazes out (chaste, equable)

into the turbulence of Zoroaster’s

Peacock Star (Yezidi refugee).

& ours.  A world of tears.

Absolute zero sears

the riverbanks.  The Mississippi

plunges under ice.  The dead of winter

sleep in Resurrection

Cemetery – Berryman,

Henry... each petrified splinter.

Massed in the clouds, a stone mizzen.

From profound Black Sea

she strains so steadily

toward me... a limpid sail, a friend.

Is she life, or death?  Her vault

is mourning.  Yet her smile

is joy – raven diagonal

coursing toward dawn (where Magi halt).

1.6.17 

Natasha Stempel, Voronezh(?) ca. 1936

implicate my speech

IRMA’S FLING

Sly Raven implicates my speech

with folded shade.  A bright

dove spangles dew-light

drifting the stream.  On the beach

by Mississippi, one yellow-black ensign

of cottonwood, one limestone

arrowhead.  An unknown

bird hums wings into a grey spine-

feather matrix – hovers droning

like yellow gyroscope

(totem for sun).  Hope

is the thing... the Word spins honing

like a drill toward a red diamond,

flaking hieroglyphs

& copper cypress skiffs

for one crossroad encounter (bond

of your voice, speaking soft to me,

from vise of mine).  Zone

of Mendelssohn tombstone –

of flint, cracked open for humanity –

to pour through like sprung torrent

& never cease flowing,

as when a raven crowing

from an empty cave (craven, abhorrent)

signals a seed flung by a planet’s wing –

smiles through the sea-gate

like Peacock Angel – fate

spannered by a checkmate (Irma’s Fling).

8.2.16

in Aleppo

COMPLACENT WEATHER

A green kid from Appalachia

gone to fight in Fallujah

– someone explain?  Aya,

Babylon!  O generations!  A

late-night flashback (this time

not a war zone) – the stone

cave, the Mezzo-Eon...

the wooden man (half-lamb,

half-king) splayed on an axle

of Lebanon cedar.

Adam, 2nd mate (bare).

In Aleppo, the shells relax

theological distinctions

(strange how disaster

nets cousins together in

dense swallow-clouds).  Sons

remember their angry fathers

in another atmosphere –

benign, complacent weather,

a constant world.  Who bothers

to refit owlish waste places?

Earth presses toward

obstructed Adam, stymied

Eve – each watchful heart races

to reach Yezidi Paradise

(jade Peacock Angel,

over the next hill

from Sheol).  Sol breaks the ice.

6.11.16