mountain crossroad

HIGH JUBILEE

As the flashy plumage of the peacocks

contrasts with the somber wall

of a hunchbacked cathedral… so

the worldly chit-chat of the literati mocks

the stark lofty simplicity

of a mountain crossroad –

where a mule bites goad

with gritted teeth (stubborn humility).

& I think of those high stony passes

of Armenia tonight

as I foot my way, right

back to bright horseplay of Itasca

primavera springs.  Up there, young

Ojibwe (generation after

generation) took the fast

of separation from the world (a brave-sprung

discipline) – & he awoke & found it truth.

So (as I inch toward the close

of my rheumy, 8-years’

rêve-glose) I want to emulate that youth

& drink the clear spring water, sing my fast

manifest the rabbit frame

these longish footprints form…

untwist my Huckleberry ruse at last.

Tell me what is a human soul & spirit

& you will say what I mean.

What they have always been –

a knot of everlasting life, the whit-

                  *

sun wedding of the nodding twain.

Theseus, Ariadne… Adam,

Eve… – til Jesus came

& lifted every limb to Paradise (again).

All’s figures.  Here’s a 4-leaf clover;

twirl it between your fingers.

See where Hobo lingers,

lost in his maze… only a cavernous nave

overhead (synagogue of Always-There).

Can you conceptualize

the structure of the Bible?  Is

your mind glazed yet, by the seven spare

sparks of Pentecost?  Has the Spirit

settled upon you as a dove

& vaulted you to eaves of love?

This is the salt that fires each aspirant

& burns away the dross around the urn –

kindling Dante, Roger Williams –

forging those adamant amalgams

melding heaven-earth, sacred-profane…

prophetic copper work of Providence.

For the covenant of God

with Man is happy seed-

grain of the common good – equivalence

of Golden Rule & last commitment;

liberty from tyranny

is predicated on glory… high

Jubilee of restoration (in a dreamer’s tent).

4.24.20

like an unremarkable cup nest

SLOW CHANT

Brown river, in a transept of browns.

In a gully of mid-March.

She slides by Arch

to Gulf, to be engulfed (drowns).

A scrawny bird scrapes overhead.

Plain sea-gull?  Or

some magpie pio-pio –

newsy jailbird finch (last heard

in 1938)?  What about Mudpie Robbins,

the St. Louis Cardinal?

Pitches his meta-material

nested steady state hysteresis (spins

on clumps of slag – chaotic shmush

of paired radii

with reversible pi

slippage).  Camouflage whoosh

like an unremarkable cup nest, filled

with grass & rootlets…

one a them twig safety nets!

Jams into stadium – an emerald,

mobile stable of staple u-particles

crowded along a spectrum

between sand, cotton… some

aleatory compass… (see Hunter King articles).

Over the chained bay waters –

rhumb line of pilot-bird.

Oscillating upward

into a faery 4-leaf clover’s

             *

earliest, minuscule sward…

as a Newport plover’s

nimble track veers

o’er sand waves (Ocean bard).

So from the lifeless mineral heart

of Minotaur, a green

sprig, emerald gemstone

springs.  With Nestorian art

(Eugenio’s grin) all the birds of the air

assemble in the palm tree;

a mustard seed (tiny,

fiery) molts to canoe (in her Ferrara lair)

& branches crossways, into quatrefoil; 

the remote & royal midnight

blue of Southern Cross (right

up there) hovers over river-soil,

& the Firebird (that sole Pentecostal

scorching glossolalia

slammed into orb-regalia)

skims from our Mater Dolorosa

biomimetic widow Rose… bent

beneath rose window

(Apollinaire’s slow

chant out of humbuggery, resilient).

So the nesting instinct of the Nazir,

the mother Hen of Rabbi

Rooster-Crow, will sigh

& spring an Easter egg (O Chanticleer).

3.18.20

the secret joy

DRIFTWOOD FIGURE

Hobo, driftwood figure, with his pal

Oblomov, headed south

aboard their pallid frigate

under the North Star (fleurs du mal).

Lent was coming on, when every

scrivener is shriven

or be damned.  Even

Isaiah, with that meteor (so very

hot) beneath his tongue, bent down

into the dust… awaiting

his Participating

Angel of the Harvest (Whitsun

shine).  The 50th, the Pentecost.

At very end of May.

One grain of precious clay,

one grey pebble… one lamp not lost.

Gravity looms there like a thundercloud.

Not Rome, but Man’s place

in the universe (ace

in the hole, casket buried in a field).

The secret joy, il ben del’intelletto –

Dante’s apprehension

of that Beatrician

quiddity.  Incorruptible glow

shed by her smiling shade… felt, so.

Bright alba in the diamond

of your emerald almond;

hopeful coracle (Micòl’s canoe).

3.6.20

a cornucopia of acorn habitats

UNDOING CAESAR

In this misty February pre-dawn dark

a Snow Moon, over silent

cedars, glows phosphorescent

silver.  Sacred thumbprint-mark

of first king (saturnine, defunct).

& I’m whorling his identity

for the FBI (maybe

some type of Memphis pharaoh-punk?)

in case we need to trace him back

to the source (Itasca

tourniquet? some kinda

hieroglyph?).  Small floaty Hobo-shack

in the heart of mudpie heartland.

Little coracle of clay

shaped for Lincoln’s birthday

maybe (Valentine’s Day).  Unmanned?

nay, manned – like a catamaran

by every air across the sun;

part of carnival season,

a gloss on Pentecost.  Mighty One

coming-forth, like hurricane or tornado

from a whisper, cave-

mouth… out of the south-

bound, multitudinous, incarnito

nexus of brownian river-motion…

out of the roaring flood

of driv-down dust, blood –

wind-sown, windblown clay… spun

                      *

into handmade UNION, like an eye-in-hand;

sliced from the Nile-bed,

bled from Osiris-head,

bricked in a pyramid of mason-sand…

our salt earth… squared beneath an almond

lamp like hovercraft

or hydrofoil (fore-&-aft

in quatrefoil) – little fylfot countermand

(counter-clockwise emerald) out of Iona;

like a coracle of Columba

or Camelot for JFK

her Isis-essence emanates from Iowa –

West Branch of western harmony

amassing trusty Athens

& Jerusalem-to-be (Hen’s

covenant of clear spring… see?

– translucent integral of truth).

& that tall rose window

tossed (like buckets of stone

water) to the skies, is massive, Ruth –

a cornucopia of acorn habitats,

a capital of washing

towns – a Kurbsky sting

against dim Ivan coups-d’état;

or Osip vs. Iosif – MLK

withstanding FBI –

Vindman in vindication (sigh) –

humanity undoing Caesar… Hallelujay

2.10.20

in the shadow of Notre Dame

TO YOU

To you who have walked with me

all along this many poem.

I would translate my diagram

of raven wing into quick algebra.

As daylight stretches into spring

I would head to Beltrami

a worn-out refugee –

Itasca hearts to weld by wring.

The Iron Range is as our life,

cold for sunrise, fire

by dusk.  Evening Star,

Dove-Bird, be thou my wife

                 *

whose effigy is coppery Peg

centered in Big Muddy silt

at Pentecost, green to the hilt.

Cahokia palm (with Easter egg).

She danced in the shadow of Notre Dame

a firebird, on 5/29

with flammable cardboard mural crown

for Apollinaire to remember (at the Somme).

& she wheeled across flat American clay

from West Branch, a circumference

of byzantine raven-sense...

to lift sad Earth toward the Realm of Day.

1.8.20

from a painting by Phoebe Gould

Ravenna is a potter's wheel

painting by Mary R. Gould, born 12.26.1927

SPIRAL HUT

Hobo moseys down his usual shore,

thinking of the finish line.

Plays with his river-sign,

his spiral hut of shoreline lore.

Someday there might be an algorithm

for the eyes in the mirror,

the project of the logosphere

curved beneath Beatrice-smile... leaf-skim

fluttering in Pentecostal glossolayea

round those pillars of Diana

stolen for Hagia Sophia

by Justinian (Solomon, I have outdone ye).

The builder’s signal of completion, the flag

of a little pine tree

planted like perfect akme

at the apex.  Unknown Soldier’s Rag

of worn linen.  Shakespeare’s cap

of happiness, he said,

that buried pot – not dead,

not even sleeping; where rays overlap

into a solid beam (centripetal matrix

of a million eyes).  It is

finished, this Poe-biz –

seraphic wayfaring Eureka-box

of pinecones, green acorns.  & the canoe

of flowering almond ribs...

your singing coracle of orbs,

suspended in accord from sapphire-blue.

12.26.19

& 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

stone, water, light, fire

DOUBLE RING

The agitations of a stone thrown in the stream

make ripples that become

a smooth continuum

of moving wheels.  One Gothic beam

draws light through stone and water –

blending elements

into high bafflements

of rainbow glass, mind with nature

beyond nature, reason with wonder.

Agnes – her exacting threads

trace Ariadne’s leads

through wilderness of sea & thunder.

Grant – his strange & strict constructions

spin a decussated

dream landscape – fated

black dirt looming beneath confections

of late sunset West Branch foliage.

Why, then, this mirage

of images?  The poet’s rage

wells from embodied fury – & her voice

– Arachne’s, Ariadne’s – is mortal

as that scar-calendar

of dread Coatlicue

unsnagged by force from Mexican corral.

Her poem is cast-iron Poseidon-net

straight from the furnace,

thus : a human face

veiled by the smoke of calumet

                     *

morphing brute fraudulence to peace,

transmuting blank white

voids to violet

& moss-green habitats of paradise.

St. Maximus Confessor, musing

monk, articulated

in theory what unfolded

in reality – fusion of divine choosing

with human liberty in understanding,

in enactment, as the spirit

moves us : radiant

tangle of wheels into a double ring.

All spokes are joined there, in the personal –

as in a room near Golgotha

babble turned glossolalia

& tongues aflame lit one bright coronal.

The poet chants out of that mental fire

& dances like a Nazirite

her intellectual delight

inviting you & me to join the choir

around that altar of a rolling stone –

a living hearth-fire

of the Earth’s desire

for equilibrium, once we throw down

the Minotaur lodged in our hearts.

Malevolent violence & lust

& greed for dominance must

be renounced... & so the dancing starts.

7.17.18

May-time

ALMOND FLING

Palmers wayfare toward Jerusalem

& Holy Sepulchre –

empty signifier

for an Easter hymn (they’ve taken him

away).  A grail of ever-floating joy –

love’s Pentecost

fire-fizz Ghost

Dance for 50 stars (Old Glory

stitched anew from burial shroud).

Rivers of Paradise

(Tigris, Euphrates,

Nile, Big Muddy) circle back to cloud

of Ocean-Stream – source of sky-waters,

like round limestone

beaded with ripple-shine

to emerald gleam (through grisaille shutters).

Hobo, fish-eyed Fisher King,

beheld this vision

through a wavy octagon

of old gazebo planks.  & sinking

down upon his quaint Vienne étable

his head (like Bran of Grain

Elevator) made moan

for Miriam, or Marian, as in the fable.

Until your May-time dawn refulgence

metamorphosed everything

into one almond fling –

Oak Restoration (eye-in-palm, perchance).

5.20.18

something very like an H

SALIENT THREAD

In the limpid evening distance, the twin

piers of the bridge are shining

as if a smile took wing.

& something very like an H is drawn

in orange ‘gainst the azure gold –

a catenary grave

for slight Ophelia (wave

goodbye now, wrinkled Henry Gourd).

Hamlet & Laertes squabble

aching in the trench;

leaves fall... the wench

is dead.  The leaves make hibble-hobble

& the scene folds into quiet,

sea, mourning.  The ship

groans back to London.  Slip

the knot now, Everyman... knit

your soul into that oaken keel.

The ropes will fray, the mast

will break, redwood at last

keel over too... yet may this steel

needle still aim toward home, somehow.

A gibbous moon ripens

onto Jaybird’s pencil-

thin & salient thread (above, below

twine almond bears)   the crossroad sings

with joyeux Yeshua

the motes flame   Manitou

Black Elk   yahoo   the tree-bell rings

10.11.16