CAHOKIAN GIFT
The sun peeks through this February weather
as a frail reed or fluted candle
finds a chink in some Siberian
prison wall. United States are altogether
in states of disarray today. Tonight
the President’s speech will
be, no doubt, a veritable
trompe l’oueil – he will not make it right.
Henry too lingers in his fog
of disaffection. Absent
from his Hobo-tent,
divided from his tiny tree-frog
peeper (cooing like a mourning dove
no larger than a copper penny –
greenish rust, gone silver Jonah
now, somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave).
He hears relentless Ocean River
bend the zodiacs toward clay,
Big Muddy bearing all away
into her coral Nephthys-quiver;
chambers of Coatlicue
like dead bee hives, storing
the crystallized outpouring
(zigzag red-black raven roundelay).
O motionless Greek urn, still turning,
Ezekiel-bones, still yearning!
Redeem Time’s churning
revolutions, Adonai – transfiguring
*
North Star! You mantle humankind
like that Madonna della Misericordia
Piero della Francesca frescoed –
tricolor umbrella-shelter for the blind!
For Agape is a magnetic prong, threads
taconite to one Itasca
lady’s slipper (showy!) – &
drops rusty anchor of Rhode Island reds
into a lambent western window-rose
(mauve, scarlet, violet & blue)
where Hope beams into view –
& from her constant fortitude still glows!
So anchor Henry’s trembling canoe
deep in your heart-of-hearts’
matrix – where timespace floats –
in that classy garage Micòl showed you;
your forsaken Byzantine three-master
beached in parochial nowhere,
ferrying Alighieri into air.
Where the mosaic wave of our disaster
cradles in the love that heals despair
& shimmers there, like Juliet
walked back from fatal plummet
or Henry Bear, helped from his chair
of perilous dismay (to restoration
& recovery). So lift
my hokey Cahokian gift
up to your Eye of Providence… Union.
2.4.20
