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

Geoffrey Hill, Yves Bonnefoy, Elie Wiesel

SMALL EMERALD ELEGY

                      Geoffrey Hill, Yves Bonnefoy, Elie Wiesel

Light at dusk across the grass

salted with white crosses,

poppies... graph of losses

rounding up the Somme.  Mass

for the mass of young men gone.

On Cemetery Ridge

the plowmen made a bridge

of bone, unbreakable – and won

the day.  Coraggio, amigos.

Somnolent River

Time will shiver silver

when the last full measure flows

from infant veins, against the grain

of human servitude –

that dominant X (rude

chi-rho, nailed up in the brain).

In the barranca (by the monarchs’

den) the battered Consul

penetrated to the well

of Golgotha.  His mind sparks

like the last firefly of evening meadows...

a small emerald octagon,

or 4-leaf clover – moon

over Eire, over the raging shadows

of the nations.  Clue vero, Ariadne-

yarn.  A catenary

arc, or smile – an airy

rack of clouds, threading the Neva R.

7.2.16

George Bellows, Rain on the River (RI School of Design Museum of Art)

Concord, Columbia

KIEVAN ARK

This gazebo’s tilted octagon

of weathered, worm-eaten

cedar holds off the rain

in Minneapolis, again.

Again, Henry will dream his songe

like a train-hopping sponge

& let summer arrange

cloud-peaks of glory (strange

magnet, fourchette d’orange).  Concord,

Columbia – créatif

brain-fever of native

mer-wit – good Will’s three-cornered

cap of happiness (wasp Osip’s

honey-basket on the Hill

of Skull).  A game of skill

is Vladimir’s, & music too – the ship’s

a Kievan ark (turned right-side-up

beneath its choral dome).

Salt-azure breath of wisdom

streams from Maximus (one cup

of simple crumblevine); his prong

is set like Lebanon

cedar beside the chronic

faultline – earthquake birthpang,

epileptic flow.  & now one smile

reverses Golgotha

with OK light – it’s manna-

Madeleine (kneads pain into a grail).

5.25.16

Gemstone of Paradise

NEVA-LAND

The poem is for lonely you

amidships (I-&-Thou

nailed coign to prow) –

& for that grubby neighbor too

next door (George or Georgina

with the garden hoe).

A solitary lamp-glow

lingers in the old cantina –

in William Blackstone’s study (man

who went to live with...)

– uphill, on the forest path

to Middy Wewe’s blithe fountain.

George Washington spins in his grave

to see how we behave

without a mind to save

us from ourselves.  Thee must be brave,

& true, & kind, & dedicated

to the perfect good –

that global neighborhood

that shines, wid’ green & delicate

kiwi-glow, beneath the rind

of blind & brutal night.

A callow grail-knight

stumbled on it once, near Samarkand –

spry Wolfram rings the tale – &

like an unknown soldier

leapt – O soulman Prospero! –

from here to Skye (in Neva-land).

5.20.16

the cube of Everyman

LAST CALUMET

The Big Sky we all inherited

glows in the subway light.

Glimpsed through the Reflector-

Net (right thro’ the Western Gate).

Like rays focused on a beam

in Apollinaire’s eye,

mass merged in energy

enough to die – you joined the stream

of unknown soldiers (Harry Poilu,

Joe Middleman) fusing

with bronze sea-gong

(tall, serpentine).  It boomed for you.

A copper coin, at the bottom of a well

with Choctaw profile, Roman

grin.  The cube of Everyman

only squint of salt – a dry seashell.

Roger the Seeker seeks his soul

in that upper air (a wind

so free).  Love pinned

him to the still-life door – oak bole

of union, preternatural;

a chrysos-oil in old

dry woods (cold

boughs, so late-imperial).

Gold thread, gold hair.  Apollinaire

smokes his last Calumet.

Salt breeze, dockyard, fishnet.

Doves in grey clouds disappear.

3.23.16

Complex of the six directions

MANGER-HAVEN

Everywhere a vector-vortex,

a 3-dimensional crane-

liftoff.  A diagonal plane

of tracer-tracks – trains, trucks,

jet-like chariots surround this

Shriners’ hideaway, where

limping children play.

Mute manger-haven, beneath curious

folksy lunar scimitar 

insignia. Granddad’s

old Buick neighborhood.

Born on Epiphany, you are

a kindly prehistoric whisper-

star, remote but bright.

Hum beneath black-white

acrid mercury bath – Big Dipper

trench-canoe.  Grave air-casket

you portage over your head,

smiling beyond dread

fumes of one Martian marble planet...

So every local khipu-knot’s

a complex of the six

directions – Shakespeare’s

skullcap, Pushkin’s troika-stop –

your eschatology through tundra,

mangy Everyman.

Lambent beatitude, then –

shaggy speech, shepherd apocrypha.

1.6.16 

John Ravlin, Boundary Waters Canoe Area, MN  (1940s)

Woods behind Shriner's Hospital, Minneapolis