Black holes have rings of light straw hair

SCRIMSHAW TRINKET

                    It’s the past that tells us who we are.  Without it

                    we lose our identity.  –  Stephen Hawking

A raven carried heaven-manna

out of the ark to lonesome

Jonah – him just come

from under the whale-rib (manna

overboard) stranded on sand

off Galilee, RI –

& it made him cry.

Those crispy cackles he couldn’t

understand – like low gull-talk

sent through a black-

hole paradox;

light straw climbed an orange rock

from the event horizon up to

null infinity –

it was all catenary,

looped in one wave-smile... – who?

Gravity? – or Grace?  Eurydice,

maybe.  (It was her cave.)

Spoiled meat you crave

is portioned by division – say,

two doves for every plowman’s mule.

Queequeg in his casket

(like a scrimshaw trinket)

penned our sempiternal Rule –

each rustic Penny in the well of night

was tender out of love.

Her vernal sparkle-trove

is polyglot – Euphrasia (eyebright).

6.8.16

Monk's Mound (Illinois)

One of the more obscure sections, I guess...

14

 
The hollow hoot of the freight train sets it seal
on a limitless night.  Plowman leans on a line,
glancing over his shoulder (fleeting scene
of red-tipped feathers - Red's farewell).

 
Spirits shuttle to the shady gates (engulfed
in fanes of wheedling arms) and Vulcan sets
the type with rugged characters - Calypso,
Circe; the scalds, the scars.  Wolf-

 
meals, in the blue forest; a rustic war
of mirror-brethren, fixed in their Medusa-
headrest.  Slumber's their insignia :
engravings of engraving, "star" for star.

                                
                   *

 
As you move toward sleep, the leavings of the loom
loom over the deep... over the speechless
limbs.  A boy who wanted to play with dolphins
feeds the sharks (its name, its doom).

 
He frets your opulent asides, the festal
trumpetings, the wails of whales; you feel
closer to home, Ulysses, as you steal
a green wink from the morbid burial's

 
abiding score.  You left his earthy body
on Calypso's shore, and for Penelope
you clipped his jasper bandolier (she
toys with it in the grass... tombs it away).