magnolia blooms

MAY-MONTH

Again, the quiet of a cloudy day

in Minneapolis.  May Day

in quarantine.  This is the day

maidens in flowery garlands would ply

their threads around the blossoming May-

pole.  Hobo is not Falstaff, I say –

he is the King of May;

a blooming almond be his rod of sway.

*

Meanwhile, archaic Hen the Rain King

by circuitous path hath circled

back to River Road.

His early neighborhood – passing

his mother’s house, her father built

– that Master of Grain Elevators

(Ravlin, J.H.).  His crop rotator’s

resting now.  River-tongues will gather silt.

An old man hoists his memories

upon his back.  Their weight,

grown heavy, will grow light…

Grace is a salty providential breeze.

I hear the whisper of her crane-

bone flute – the drone

of one trompette marine…

Guillaume’s grande dame will rise again.

*

& I sense Osip’s revolving sisters,

melding gradually their

sarabande.  Rose flowers

share circumference (O lento tenderness).

*

I never want to leave this house.

Orioles sing in the forest

under their shade palimpsest…

(oaks’ rattling snare-susurrus).

*

A fresh breeze brings the May-month in.

The sisters ring their double wreath.

The young hawthorn on Fisher St.

is blooming pink.  The almond

in her dark eyes glows, her smile

of Sheba-Shekinah… the lady

of the Song of Songs (spry

tree of Galilee, in Rhody Isle).

*

The gawky prehistoric gingko

Granddad planted is

still there (at 1615).  Its

golden Memphis fans billow

in breezes off the Mississippi.

The asphodel, acacia…

the acorns greening, high

over the house… & now I see

her – cartwheeling across a field

like some sapling tornado!

Sophie or Pocahontas?  O

that Gravesend kid – her diamond shield

my royal seal!  Her acorn coracle

my Isis barge – her eye

my Argo’s midnight sky!

Across the Black Sea of a world-debacle

shining (congruent) one American ray –

my Henry-church, our 

Churnagogue… one flour-

cattedrale – out of spiritual clay!

*

Like simple San Fran in Frisco

he crost himself, at height

of orange Golden Gate –

where Juliet booked… O

her last, self-cancelled flight.  & Henry

built a rude crossroad

in old Rhode Eye.  Sold

on Roger’s fine distinction – worldly

profiting & holy soul-seeking be not

the same.  Yet they are wed

by law-abiding God

into a single providential knot –

that normative & innocent new world

as old as children underneath a tree

chanting together of a chaste reality

where Love is as the Ocean – pearled

in tides of light (beneath the moon,

beyond the moon).  This charity

stands like a tall pine tree,

from earthy root up to invisibility… one

Union of pure dream-substantiality;

good will, reflected in the hearts

of humankind – with all our arts

in-woven there (O graceful tapestry).

*

The little magnolia on River Road

by Granddad’s elegant abode

unleashed her winter load

of fluttery wings (Primavera mode).

Persephone, Eurydice go underground

& Beatrice to the sky…

a grain of wheat must die

so spring’s magnolia blooms abound.

May Day… the worker bees unite.

The earth itself is in labor

fired in the kiln of Evermore.

Communion loaves of clay ignite.

Everything spins in the green matrix.

Liberty & justice, equity

& equilibrium… an origami

fold of love & intellect – deep Genetrix

a whirl of fiery faery feet – Elohim

twirling on galactic rim

with ocarina Jonah-hum,

to glaze the grail-stone with her hymn.

Sophie was making rivers on the patio,

& found a black-brown woolly bear –

small furry embryonic caterpillar

searching for a leaf to call ground zero.

Henry was looking for an oak-bole too.

At end of May, at Pentecost,

on Dante’s birthday, JFK’s… lost

Restoration RI zone?  Hagia Sophia? – YOU.

5.1.20

like a gouache by David Jones

LITTLE GROTTO

Day like a gouache by David Jones.

Diaphanous vision, muted

by sea-wind, raincloud.

Mountain, meadow, rust (earth tones).

The nightmare of the Great War

like sulphur tuning fork

or buried line in Eden Park

commingles its dilemma in a metaphor

like rose in steel dust (Roger’s compass,

pointing NNW).

& Image of the Beast is

emblem for the matrix of that enterprise

encrypted at the center of a corn maze

where Satan & his Minotaur

(ICE-bound, possessed) are

snared (handcuffed in their own cold glaze).

The Man of Lawlessness, like Terrible

Ivan – he makes his own desire

the absolute measure;

he’s lost to caritas (in his own bubble).

Imagine Ghiberti’s golden doors

at the Baptistery in Florence

with angels forced to dance

to the lash of demonic matadors…

imagine Eugenio, alongside Clizia

locked in the library

with Mussolini – her sturdy

sun-glance, over the chessboard… ah,

*

bright wings!  When Everyman & Woman

breathe in the heartland

of their living temple… &

Joachim’s eagle plummets through the Plan

of Ages!  Providential restoration, O

downglide of Holy Ghost!

Multitudinous host

of human happiness – blue emerald glow

of soft & silent cat’s-eye revolutions,

roll!  & be the planetary

hearthland, wide prairie…

deep swell of Thunderbird flute sessions!

Because all the world’s a stage, coach;

the play’s the salty verse

for catching Eddy the Perverse,

who suckles his Corona like a roach

out of the Minotaur’s bleak heart –

rotten as… who can say?

God knows.  Only way

’s to pinwheel back where we start,

Pocahontas – up to the swirling

origin of springs.

A little grotto brings

its whisper of clear water.  Everything

draws near.  Pleroma for Fisher King

(little lad in oak tree)

shines, golden, leafy.  His

mother smiles… rainbows from nothing.

3.28.20

in the dawn mirror

SINGLE SPOKE

These quiet late winter days.  My mother

lies in her small bed.

The past is not restored

but rows to its island across the water.

I see it in the distance, there –

dark rocks, pines wrapped

in mist.  What happened

to those springing years?  Vibrant affair

of VISTA volunteers… Rhode Island

skipping in my early heart.

JFK’s Newport.

A tiny sea-casket of azure, sand

in the dawn mirror of a rose lighthouse

casting Roger’s heart’s eye-

beam – his Providential replica

of conscience-liberty (human Cosmopolis).

You elevate my Minnesota grain

toward your red-violet wine

welding human & divine

on the river’s leaping arch – then

paddle further… through green pillars

from Columbia to Gravesend,

Pocahontas Williams (raven-

haired pilot for milky stars).

Where the Wain of Charles is chartered

to an evergreen holm oak –

your Ocean State a single spoke

spinning my reel & sarabande, wholehearted.

3.10.20

up in Montrose Park

PINE-SMOKES

The war to end all wars was done.

On May 29th, 1919

Sir Arthur Eddington

tested heavy light, suspended

in a thread around the moon-black sun;

so gravity bent clay

toward refining accuracy.

Black Elk extends to six directions

silent gratitude & recognition,

just as an icon speaks

in speechless pine-smokes

or a painting glows with valedictory

emotion.  Around the summer solstice

rose-phosphorus sunset

seals the monuments’ regret

in Washington – western promise

magnifies & coalesces, in a microcosm

(up in Montrose Park,

at Avon Place, by River R).

That armillary zodiac, or star-prism

revealing violence, imperial dominance

(diagonal to its redeeming

countersign) – entangling

mn-mutter, amid all circumstance…

sweet Angel, levitant above the cancer

of the Capital; fleet-

footed Evening Star, bright

Pocahontas (waterlogged Delta, triangular).

2.24.20

February, face-to-face

VERTIGO-CURL

It was a night of misty melting;

Hobo, the boho, sawed

through his dark glass so

in old St. Paul.  Janus was hinging

everything on sister Sue’s nag,

at the racecourse (Mordish

Hippodrome) – his wish-

ful thinking left him holding the bag.

The sky mottled gray, like a blurred

chessboard of dirty snow.

An alleged RI rainbow

filtered through Amina’s pocket (mirrored

Pocahontas), while a Balkanized

cannibalism consumed

the demos, knocking Sue

Mixam to the maximum (paralyzed).

Irma admired the Emir’s muscle

from her stolen distance.

In that mossy manse

with her ear to the hearth, the hustle

all over the earth seemed a triangle

built by Souperior Deo

for a bonfire canoe

– his own, by Odin’s kayak!  & to bungle

it was Man’s bad gamble.  Sal

Miniato & Silo

Paennim could tell you

as much – ‘twas comet Groundhog’s tail

                        *

after all.  So they went eel-gathering

all over Galilee for that

matter of Bretagne, mate –

the official King, along with his blathering

& corny Maid Minniver, his lovey-

dovey yaw-way L-vessel.

She would sail through hell

for old Ossifer Osiris – hand-in-glovey

with him, all the way!  Ecstatic Itasca

purled in the tiny whorl

of her Vertigo-curl,

like a Topsfield spanner in Alaska!

She was very moving, that sheepish yak

shellacked in the clay.  Like

an emerald in the smallest tyke

of a state, of all states – the Union, Jack!

She dwelt in the heart-hearth of Odd Eddy,

looming through mystic slips

like Evangeline E. Nilegnave (skips

across rocks down Jeannie’s Mississippi);

like a raven over Neva, like Anna

acting the dove in our eye

– is you serious, Rus?  Why

risk ice for Osissyshipiris?  In Louisiana?

Hobo says, I see our sis Lady Liberty

surge like Old Ironsides

through the fog, on this Ides

of July.  Let’s go find her, Henry.

02.02.2020