it's only gravity

SEA-SALTS

… an astronomer consulting the stars to-day would announce

                    that the most favourable day of the year for weighing light is May 29.

                                       – Arthur Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation

The brightness of the light shines more or less

in various fields of stars.

The Hyades, for instance, are

magnificent – rays bend around the sun’s eclipse

according to their gravity (1132?)

& their displacements make

a parallax, will shake

the skies – like that black hole in Virgo

where the whole cosmos in its photon rings

as in a coelostat on El Principe

looks back from a funhouse mirror

mired in the cryptic gloom one Friday brings

(in April, in RI).  So when Prince Hobo Hal

sets out upon the Ocean stream

paddling his gyroscope-trireme

his dim reflections shade his violet pal

Jean-Jo, behind their glare.  It’s only gravity.

They glide along past green Cahoki-o

beneath a soaring Gateway prow

toward topaz Gulf (ineffable Mardi Gras)

where Jean-Jo’s mild humility

(like unknown soldier or

grey pebble on the shore)

emerges – lightweight solidarity –

& swathes him in a dove-grey cloud

of granite apses, limestone

spires… an airy congregation

of sea-salts (& makes his father proud).

4.7.20

like Frisco shepherd

SOLID AIR

Our Lenten season creaks along.

Involuntary shut-ins

calibrate their sins

or contemplate that deep-time throng

still singing songs through solid air

(celestial City on a Hill).

Who loves like Roger will

yet see Rose Isle, past baleful stare

& power-grabbing guile.  Meanwhile

Prince Hal will follow Hobo

like Huck Jim, & go

where currents flow (deep Delta style).

That Sleeping Lord of David Jones

dreams watercolor landscapes

old as Magdalenian apes,

bright as Justinian gemstones…

they glow with compassionate faces

beneath shimmering raven-stars

across midnight blue

while drowsy Hobo rolls a smudge of clay

(Pipestone maroon) into an eye

anchored in leafy palm (ala

Cahokia) – de son bateau c’est clé.

The King looks from his mandorla

like Frisco shepherd… mild

as forest mint gone wild,

sweet as nursing nightingale (selah).

His mother is the Queen of France,

his father is invisible

whose whispers out of Israel

ignite Prince Hal’s American romance.

4.6.20

Henry having a royal fit

ARIADNE’S CROWN

A limpid morning, Palm Sunday.

In the little woods

behind the Shriners’ (closed)

Hospital, gaunt oaks lift branches high

in anxious supplication (to an emerald

Acorn King).  Prince Hal,

scion of OK Gal, in his corral

of febrile & uneasy crowns, grows bold –

to place his father’s own upon his brow

in the Jerusalem Chamber

(where Huck & Jim clamber

aboard… that cardboard scow,

the trumped-up King of England’s dhou).

The river bends, reverent

& full of revery (blent

with the clay into its royal slough).

You boy, there!  Yes you, boy –

rivery O-buoy!  Come here!

King David shall appear

& dance – like naked singularity

or Solomonic wormhole, full of sacred

density – before the Ark!

& with the flicker of a quark

the center of the galaxy turns red

& churns like furnace of the cosmic kiln –

inverted mirror of MLKy

Y’Way – so massively

reflecting (like a missile-toed oak-gall)

*

that mauve & scarlet Rooster of the Day

who chants his clear call

to Event Horizon Wall

& leads the Magi home – another way!

M87 – black hole (multiplied

by 56, at least) –

from center of the feast

of lights – preternatural Virgo, Argo-eyed

Hagia Sophia – Isis of Ocean River

barge!  Prince Hal

trembles now, elliptical

epileptic – empty Apollo quiver…

overshadowed by that Thunderbird

shadow-of-shadows (el Rio

del Espiritu Santo).

His Ariadne’s Crown only a word

for the implicit eagle’s nest of silence

where the plague-eddies

of blind King Eddy

disappear into Big Muddy, & the dense

congregation of the Humble One

who rides a mule into town

(distance-divided by their own

disease, their wrangles for the crown) –

are suddenly hushed before those lips

mute-smiling, like a rose canoe;

those palms, encircling us now

in one speechless embrace… (love-clasp).

4.5.20

train to Boston

FATE-LINES

Hobo follows his instinct to the river.

A serpentine circulation,

labyrinth – heart’s burn.

Romans might haruspicate the liver

of an ox, or note the forays of a raven

like smoke-signals overhead;

Hobo lingers with his own dead

Providence photos – train to Boston

or that old blind man who walks the plank

straight off the cliff (at Prospect

Park).  Ghosts intersect.

Eurydice in San Fran hits a blank

wall of blue salt water.  Prince Henry Hal

uproots the better part of soul

to be the bard imperial –

shelving himself with racks of Fleurs du Mal.

To be refuge for troubled consciences,

Rhode Island was.  & was.

Hobo works with materials

by eye-in-hand (fate-lines, hunches);

commissioned for a wedding-song

of earthen pots (Cahokian)

& Morning Star – where one

Virgo-conjunction plants her Gateway prong

the Rio del Espiritu Santo will merge

St. El with Muddy Waters

& Ravenna’s virgin martyrs

with a N’Orleans fanfare... cosmic splurge.

12.10.19

guarding the garden

painting by Phoebe Gould (ca. 1992?)

GREEN CORN

Half-moon tonight, like a silver flask

of molten lava.  On this date

George Washington was translate

(1799).  Here’s his life-mask :

fine profile.  Merging in white clay,

like a peaceful moon.

Landlord, when all’s said & done.

Valley Forger, sensing Californ-i-ay

in the green corn of his plantation

garden.  Grace Ravlin

etched that evening scene –

sweet Virgo in Virginia (dawning nation).

The myth rides with the Indian.

Scars limbs of slaves.

Everyone behaves.

A raven-crumb plummets into ocean.

Something’s lugged back, out of clay...

the lunar wilderness.

Innocence, blessedness –

Sophia twirling in the calm of day.

Like young Hal emerging from a golden egg

(his father’s legacy).

Attainted crown, see –

buried bones in Resurrection (Pig’s

Eye) Cemetery.  Across the river,

on Lakota Bluff.

Two swords – it is enough.

Gesthemane is haunted, Indian-giver.

12.14.18

Pearl Harbor Day

MOON-TIDE

Prospero, home in Milan,

dozes in winter sun.

Hobo, on the run,

hands Henry his drownèd plan.

Pearl Harbor Day.  His Juliet,

her father-love unmet,

unmatched, flings it

(on his birthday) off the Golden Gate.

Incest breeds in the wounded psyche

trapped in regression-mirrors.

Henry’s his own father’s

worst enemy (Knight to Queen 3).

Hal speeds to Falstaff’s hideaway.

Idleness debauchery

& trickery will be

his refuge from a father’s eye.

So Henry runs to poetry –

where Hobo rules the sleepy

riverbank, all lotus-weedy

with papyrus-infancy

(Atlantis-libraries of Alexandria).

He seeks his sweet cousin

for soul reunion – one

shady psyche for another ghost.  Selah!

Prospero!  You’ve gone all cranky

& explicit now.  Don’t drown

your book just yet, man –

Henry threads a maze of hanky-panky.

Full fathom five   thy father lies

these are pearls   his eyes

the moon-tide hurls  (sailors

sleep beneath waves, where firelight dies)

The flame in the heart surges, or is

deflected into shallows.

Juliet of the swallows

flittering at dusk... Henry’s paralysis...

shady pining for the sister-dove –

Orpheus, Eurydice

Alighieri, Beatrice

Ray by Nile, yearning for Eye of love...

Hobo’s intellect of mother-wit

tangential, tacit

               *

star, Cautantowwit

Raven-shade of Narragansett

Buried god Osiris, burdened Berryman

weeps on his barbed-wire fence

of psychic violence.

Angry sons are on the march again,

the envious ones – misled by signs

of fraught deflected love;

the Dragon’s treasure-trove,

the Minotaur’s deceit (threadlines,

snarled cul-de-sacs of self-defeat).

Manxmen of tyranny –

their island fantasy

a sunken travesty (Narcissus-fleet).

I remember your weaver’s baton

in Providence, Francesca.

The shuttle flying (rock-a-

bye, baby) to shape a golden woolen

poncho – gift for a San Francisco

poet (from Rhode Island).

Like a wand in your hand,

unspoken, felt – taking flight so

from one heart to another, at

speed of light – what

equilibrium you wrought

there!  Or an image of it –

warm, wearable, at human scale.

From the heart, the earth

shines – ruby hearth,

or emerald (blue-cloudy pearl).

The mystery of Providence

is as a rose in flower,

full of people-power –

origami of experience

unfolded in a safety-net

concordance –

each fold in silence

married to the others – what

complete rose blossoming!

Inexpressible

joy of a grateful Abel,

poncho-whorled into a golden ring!

12.7.18

Dark backward & abysm of time

RUSTIC HAY

Like a Prince Hal of the Iron Age,

surrounded by a full staff

of devices (every gaffe

in the book) Henry took a page

from Stealing Drums in Trinidad

as they slubbered through the murk

of a flood plain, like turkeys

in a hurricane.  It was that bad.

Had to go, blind fool, from Addis Ababa

to Babylon – from Lake Tana

to Concrete Cavern (ah,

Bull-Dance of Hummy Blah-Blah!)

& recapitulate his fancy

infancy – in a shed

built of old dry blood

& scarecrow straw, with Nancy

the Cow & Her Yodeling Shepherds

making rustic hay.

He lived a year & a day

on all fours – eating grass, curds

& whey, locusts, honey, in a swamp

by the Jordan, in Judea...

It’s all there, Maria –

in Miriam’s mandorla (under the lamp).

Henry wandered thus through drowsy realm

plucking mandolin...

one silver star over dark green pine,

one cirque of gold at the Argo helm.

4.19.16