unfinished business

LIGHT CANOE

Cold Minneapolis.  White flakes

float solo, lazily

toward frozen sod.  He

sleepy too, Great Harry – shakes

his fusty bearskin (Mister Rabbi

tucked into his cave).

Wish they would behave.

A wayward dolor over fly-by

country ekes the bile from bunny-fur.

Infinitely gentle,

infinitely... mental

clamps inhibit memory, yessir.

Over the mantle in the dim apartment

Lafayette was dancing

just for Washington.  Sing

victory, Columbia – our true intent

was Liberty.  Hail to the Chief

in Indian Country –

arctic blue pine tree

sheds secret home (Sending Relief).

Grandpa’s got amnesia now.

The old brass shell from

Belgium mourns like a bell

in the pipe-smoky corner.  Plow

up the rose from the deep well of France,

Willa – that spiral dance

Crane zigzagged in a trance,

Atlantis echoing in weedy elegance.

                      *

Unfinished business crowds a heavy

surf onto the canvas.

Painter sticks to grass

with orange tar-baby.  Chevy

waves from Davy’s Locker – swings

his palm toward magnetic

north.  D.C. frantic –

Empire stuns fleet – Mort brings

us to us knees.  Only a wee

green island merman,

imperturbable, remain –

Pacific mule (Admiral of Ocean Sea).

A little grey jay (Whisky Jack)

whistles through her veil

of salt-shaking.  Sail

on, Peace Corps – Pearl’s Clamshack!

Under the turbid rotoring

of pyramid schemes –

when trumpery becomes

a weird mudfish – a rippling

stone floats to the surface, springs

to hover – catenary

honeycomb (or berry-

gem).  All minions, toughs & underlings

flee suddenly, like shady characters

out of a bad novel

(their plots unravel).

Blue J’s light canoe threads jasper piers.

12.7.16

he talked in sign lingo

COPPER BEECH

Late crickets from low crevices

scree high morse code

along the River Road,

mourning what vanishes.

The trestle bridge shoulders its iron

rust refrain.  Hobo,

Henry rehearse their slow

converse – where’s Bunny Rabbi gone?

He talked in sign lingo, for fun;

smoke signals over Pipestone

bearded the Old Gray One

whose windy glance was made of sun.

The bards were babbling nonsense

around the Ink Palace...

forgive their lack of grace

whose pride is their inheritance.

Meekness is the key to peace,

a mule named Franky said;

our mutual Day of the Dead

fringes each cot with golden fleece;

both enterprise & government

rest on bone shoulders

of the poor – our diverse

attitudes were never meant

to drive us to unpeel the Union.

Pensive eyes discern

gray beech limb’s copper urn

of reconcilement (smiling veteran).

11.8.16

down to St. Lou

SLATE PANOPLY

Henry’s Chair is in the woods,

beside the Rio del Espiritu

Santo.  Hobo to you,

mayhap – lost in his darker moods;

drawing a diagram in river-sand

of Ursiana’s barer pillars,

moss-bound Giuliana’s

pines (forlorn Ravenna swampland).

Emblems of spiritual epilepsy,

moon friar.  Lame lone wolf

Dante, crying for a proof

of integral radiance (nay, nay

sobs hunchback Leopardi).

Hiawatha whistles there –

follow the tripping Hare

Whirlaway to Itasca – see?

The spring.  Mammoth drone of stream.

Down to St. Lou,

where airs axle true –

bloodveined grey sponge, clay dream...

tuning-fork in the river road.

Wheel, innocent rabbi,

through your Galilee

of primary colors – lift the load

from Henry’s sloping shoulders.  Bend

a prism to Columbia,

slate panoply of Jonah-sky –

who lights the harbor at grave’s end.

9.15.16

Henry's Chair

all aboard the Midnight Sun

FROM MEMPHIS

O Lady walking by, in black

jacket & yellow skirt,

you lift me from inert

& vacant thought into a way-back

memory-milieu.  The Promised Land

of sunlight at midnight

is nest for monarch flight

& viceroys too (you’ll understand

when we get there).  The Milkweed King

is Hobo in disguise –

the motherland is prize

for steady Jim (gone huckleberrying

with Oblomov).  He walks gently

into rabid disputes,

young Nanabozo – toots

his horn – Rabbi-clown, my

Hiawathee Bigfootprints

of Peace; he’s taken down

in order to rebound

into renown, like Printemps

Spring-Rain Joan, or Franny Cricket

(she of jingling anklets

in the cedar dusk).

There’s earthy scent beneath the musket;

there’s a penny in the well.

A dinged wingèd profile

traipses from the Nile –

elopes from Memphis (into Israel).

6.1.16

Along Path P

INFANT BROW

At the crossroads, the just man suffers

just for being just –

Job, or Boethius,

or Jesus – carrying a load for others.

Dante whispers in Ravenna dusk

near his exile’s end.

Beatrice, penned

in a rose window, sets his task –

to sing the icon that he sees

breathing through granite

as turtledoves through light

gray feathers tune the breeze.

Stillness in time.  Iron history

crowns an infant brow...

the Son of Man, now

turning evergreen (in Maggie’s

almond eye).  The desolations

of a nightmare fade

when that rusty parade

sinks into brown decades (stations

on the prairie).  Mary Morning Star

signals her six ways

along Path P...  Praise

Manitou & Manitou-Child, our

big-eared Bunny Rabbi – he

of the octave melody –

which we sang, Adonai,

before dawn, one Epiphany...

4.11.16

Spooky distances (for 3.14159............).......)...

APPLE PIE

Hobo drowses in his Einstein field

of asphodel, spooky distances.

Life’s tender differences...

only mauve peonies on copper shield.

Irrational yearning for the earth

might be the shortest path

to Providence.  Wrath

of History’s a concave labyrinth –

your soul must wash a dusty planet

down Big Muddy, Hobo.

Rise from your bed of woe;

our Hero beckons from his granite

lintel toward the circling sun.

Path P (transcendental

for each chaste equal

guest of compassing compassion).

The one who went to live with Indians.

Blackstone, Yellow Sweeting

apple-man – his greeting

(like sweet Williams’ own) a Both-Hands

Welcome, Minnehaha flute –
ray of soul liberty,

loop of Easter Rabbi...

Hart, Malcolm, Giulietta’s route

bent (parallactic) toward the light.

A catenary smile

or Life-Saver will

thread sad grooves into a chariot.

3.14.16

Mississippi River, from Indian Mounds Park (St. Paul)

Walk through the mirror

MINOR TEAR

Bleak winter shades... crows in the trees

beak-gnashing, rasping (caw-

caw, hawk-hawk).  Low

Earth, rotund silentium (dregs, lees).

Stillness of still-life – Brown Decades

(hoist Peto).  The Just Man

imago is just a man –

barely there, through simple glades

of green.  Mirror Lakes liked him,

in Mendelssohn.  Only

an infinitely gently-shivery

Rabbi, Hiawatha Honeybear – bro Jim,

our lunky logos (penny-loafing).

Who bears it all, past

He- or She-Cat’s paste-

up Geryon-masque (a scary nothing).

This maze contains a minor tear.

& through a crevice there

one Ariadne hair

leads you to almond-gold rain-bear.

Earth seethes with ziggurats of fraud

& blind men lash themselves

to violence (selva

oscura mitts gorilla code);

but it shall not be so with thee.

Bunny hikes one eye

& looks for wheeling Eli

to come by (benevolent memory).

3.3.16

Big Rabbit & the Can-Canute

TOTEM-GHOST

Winter.  An imperturbable water-serpent

flows smoothly south, under

the presiding MN-arch

(Peace Bridge).  Cloud-blanket (quiet, lambent

silverthought).  Ice-glancing light

of North Star State –

each ray will penetrate

the sixpack hexagons of Snow Rabbit

– that giant Bigfoot totem-ghost

Sophie & Phoebe rolled

to quasi-life (backyard).

Some Hiawatha Teotihuacan (host-

figure, phantom King).  Messiah

is a butterfly.  Love,

Love, and be loved, beloved

Bumblebee – amen, selah.

This glossy lala glossolalia

is like a peacock’s choral

cry, or agate-spiral

Saverin-Canute, out of Iona

(green Columba’s jaybird hymn).

At the spare crossrood

of naked servitude –

Boethius, Maximus, beaten

senseless – there Polaris burns,

& melts into the heart

of summer Ocean.  Start

your laddie-dance, lass – Roy returns.

1.26.16