wheezing in an iron lung

PATIENT BURRO

Utterly subjective universe

of the poet, Hamlet

dreaming action... what

was I thinking?  A serious nurse

stood by my cradle (Abbott Hospital).

I was four years old,

wheezing in a cold

iron lung.  Paralysis (total).

1956.  Guillain-Barré.

Dr. Pohl – I

don’t remember (sigh).

Osiris in his casket, hey

ey yo.  The photo in the Star-

Tribune – toothy Henry

hugs his scarlet monkey

in a wheelchair.  Recovery! (Bizarre.)

Like the slight son of Giuliana

in a clinic in Ravenna.

Watch her parabola –

purple violet (or cypripedium

reginae) fringes the pottery;

congregate, massive

unguent jar, evocative

lure (hand of Lippo Memmi)

harboring anointment oil.

Milk, sap, honey,

wine, blood...  See

the star-eye riding the sea-roil

                  *

on her prow, lancing the Black Sea!

Magnet of gold foil,

handle for plow-soil –

wave of personae-galaxy!

As if the searching character of Isis

were encapsulated in

this matryoshka-queen.

Vierge Ouvrante (Hagia Sophia’s

magnifying glass, or Henry Church)

sums up significance

of eucharist – each instance

in a suffering kenosis, the human lurch

(from safe beatitude to surf

beat attitude)

leading to passionate

étude (H. Gorecki... – it is enough).

Prow like a beak, eye like star,

the solidarity of Polar

Bear – it is our

birthright, people everywhere!

Metaphysical, incomprehensible

Love, that finds an echo

in the infinitely patient burro

suffering everything.  Your fable

inches toward the human heart

on light footsteps...

so Nora’s rose keeps

Eros innocent (sweet garden violet).

1.25.19

breath of future time

ROSE ISLE

Providence must be frozen now –

near as cold as here.

There, in a corner

of RISD Museum, on the brow

of a painted rise – a late-medieval

child-world.  Horses

& men, innocent & coarse

in their gaudy armor, their carnival

smiles... all in a day’s work,

limns the rustic Master

of the Providence Disaster

(Crucifixion, id est).  The wolf-pack

crowds up a drowsy, lamb-shy

Messiah-King.  His large

eyes scan the callous surge

ringing those toxic letters – IN RI.

We learn dissonance from what blocks

our way.  The enemy

in the script – mythology

played to strength – flows through the locks

like Trickster (shifty for defense).

Jonah swims with the fish.

Jason or Gilgamesh –

the babe in the river-basket – immense

human soul-wheel spun from sloppy

river-clay, to stand

for Mama’s Best (hand

circumnavigating Ocean Sea

                 *
            *          *
                  *

like sunken Galileo Galilee).

Enameled figure, lambent

on his Southern Cross.  Bent

course, awaiting Arimathee.

Merely a muttered word you must

absorb, digest, like that

moist crumb from Josaphat

(bottom of the well of Cain’s mistrust).

Cain is unable to redeem himself.

The Minotaur blockades

all Ariadne’s braids.

Only a feather from Fiore’s shelf –

Joachim’s rapt ghost – might wave

a breath of future time

across Earth’s clumping rhyme

& waft her grey eye through its architrave.

The wooden limbs of Roger Williams,

still petrified atop

his cliff.  Scars crop

our hope – Man’s malice rims

the years with lime – yet still

the copper peristyle

of liberty’s Rose Isle

shines in its matrix (Man’s good will).

1.4.17