April is the finickiest month

SMOKE PILLARS

April is the finickiest month, sunshine & snowfall

confusing the fiddleheads.  Atop the bluff

across from St. Paul, three tough-

soft Indian mounds are igloo-domical.

A little further down, the buried poet-man

dreams in Resurrection Cemetery.

& further yet, across from Eero’s airy

Gateway Arch, Cahokian terraces remain –

vernal ziggurat earthworks climb into sky.

The river moves in swerves… &

doesn’t move.  A copperhead,

unblinking, eyeing you… deciding – live or die?

Flanking that rushing flickering stillness

the mounds are more than motionless.

How… curious crowds can only guess.

Perpetual smoke pillars curse & bless.

Yet these temples are only an analogy.

Even the priests understood

that much.  The man tied to wood,

the woman in flames… perverse apology

in the bloodshed glass – recognition

forsaken.  Of the friend

nearby, who takes your hand…

(a glance to the heart, beyond perdition).

These vast mausoleums of bone & ash

frame unwavering grief.

Magdalenian memory, beyond belief.

& the light will not die (dwells in her eyelash).

4.13.20

pokey asphodel

SMOKE-TREASURY

That the diamond exists, murmurs Black Elk

justifies your dream.

Octahedral theme

of orientation by humility (MLK

& JFK meet in your mandala-canoe).

As Roger the Seeker christened

Providence a refuge, at the end

of seeking (for beginning anew).

To model the heavenly kingdom of God

in clay, or dusty speech

like a doorway, or Gateway Arch;

like rose mandorla, made of flesh & blood.

Not city on a hill, but village

in a valley, by the river’s

mouth – one Narragansett

giver’s canonical Key into the Language

of America.  That the diamond exists

justifies your dream

in shades.  Mandelstam

(in Pushkin & Scriabin) writ of this –

because the Redemption has already happened

art is set free, to celebrate

(watch Oscar Cullmann adumbrate

this meaning in his diagram).  The End

is the beginning.  Not that the end has come.

Only interrogate

this blistered heart

to find that smoky rite of Eastern Rome

                   *

spring in the limping step of herald Hart

or the epileptic anguish

of poet Prof. English

Berryman (in his hexagonal ziggurat

of Resurrection Cemetery – over the river

from St. Paul).  Come home,

patters that silver stream

from crane-bone flute (archaic sliver

flinting mica, in Cahokia); a raven

laughter diagram

or Bluejay paradigm

or Jonah-dove conundrum (rune haven);

a sweeping cry out of Cautantowwit’s

smoke-treasury; an answer

for yon affectionate peacemaker

when he crawled into the Narragansetts’

welcome-tent.  A smile (ineffable

as that 6-sided snowflake

traced by Black Elk

over the grave of Buffalo Bill).

All this intricate nautical geometry!

– these asides by Hobo,

his obeisance to Venus (Virgo-

ascendant sunset cemetery) –

is just the flimsiest balsa-wood scale model

of an Old Ironsides ark

or Constitution… spark

for Gravesend dancing-floor (pokey asphodel).

3.11.20

Minnesota Mining & Meditation

BRASS COIL

Among the North American tribes

Ojibwe midéwé medicine

was considered, bar none

dark & strong.  Copper for earlobes,

iron for arrowheads.  The beetling sky

barreled down over tamaracks

as wind made tracks

disappear in shifty drifts... hey ey

yo, winter raven!  Iron mother-bird.

Little Henry Limp

climbed out of the stump

of his papa’s grave (obsequious word,

weaker than puff of cottonwood).

Up there in Rez Cemetery

overlooking Mississippi –

him foolish-fond Ski-Neighborhood,

him dream-nest, reconciling every pain.

Down below on the floodplain

wimpy Abel, mean Cain

wrassled for the gilded unclean

scepter of dominion – going insane;

in that negative snow-light

your abject, self-abasing wight

is king of the weak, the outcast, in his rain.

& who shall have the succession, lil Hamlet?

The brass coil Vengeance

around your wrist, the dance

of California, D.C.... where’d my safety net?

10.21.19

La Vida es Sueño

ROLLING DOOR

Henry, magnanimous prince

like Saggy Mundo on his

Tower Hill (the Witch’s

Hat) waits in his chains, listens.

Them animal pelts smell bad,

sez Hobo (Sancho

P. Zee).  Life, my friends – no

dream, declaims Sir Galahad.

The little paralyzed air-prince

like a baby Fisher King

(Guillain-Barré) would bring

last summa out of everything (wince).

Like Adam taking Eve’s advice

he’d melodize the whole

isle to an apple donut

hole – & give it to his son (nice!).

Pallas Athena wore an aegis-skin

with gold palladium-bangles

dangling at all angles

from her circuiting Argo-spin;

it was a sacrifice, like Morning Star

or Igor’s Rite of Spring –

the icon bearing everything

buried in grassy Galilee, in a jar

of myrrh (brimful, for Magdalen).

Lippo Memmi pinxit

(now in Providence).  What

X will mark the spot, Justinian?

        *

What hour marks the lux fiat

when Mary in her pontoon-

boat (sun-gold doubloon

nailed to the keel) will celebrate

the whorl of Theotokos-kenosis-

hypostasis – on a clay

wheel (out of Cahokia)?

Whose eye-in-hand is... Henry’s

sister-cuz?  Whom doth the Grail serve?

I mean the grey stone

hands in that quaternion

of mudstream... – who has the nerve

to lift the lid of Henry’s sepulcher?

In Resurrection Cemetery

(northeast of Pig’s Eye)

Osiris waits for Isis-murmur –

America sleeps in her old nightmare

until that Pussycat (on Easter)

knocks the rolling door

out of the way... & Henry’s there!

Limping from his throne of rosy clay,

his island ocean-ray –

borne on his own birthday

like a faerie Pharaoh (Narragansett Bay)

to the Rose Lighthouse (near Gould

Island), in chariot

of dawnlight (mauve

& violet) – like a Sun Ken (holy fool’d).

2.21.19

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

spring crucible

ASPHALT PATH

Yesterday your birthday, Papa.

92, mild ghost.  Sun-wheel

set at Swan Point... seal

of a woman’s self-extinction.  Ah,

woeful calendar (Coatlicue).

Strife of father & son.

Friday black sun,

aboriginal sin (hey ey

yo).  Here in Minneapolis

snow, interring April

in one wide hexagonal,

preserves a buried man in ice

(Resurrection Cemetery).

Henry ascends the asphalt

path from heart’s tumult

to frozen Father of his Country.

Washington Ave. Bridge.  Yet

(wobbling, wavering

within your shadowy

ring of flame) – dawn’s pale promise!

Man’s faithless diffidence his own

life sentence, we

depend upon your mercy

to raft us into Libertas again –

mysterious Jonah in the “33”

(Mars’ den) whose hum

breaches delirium,

wind-bred to share (Nazarene glee).

4.13.18

bearing her true report

ROSE TATTOO

This tenderness of moss-green light

in the craggy oaks around

the Witch’s Hat (ground

bass of Sibelius, to finish right).

The hat itself a darker green.

Twilight of thunderstorm –

fork-gyring twister-worm

over holm oak in Oklahoma (lonely

scene, brooding).  That mounded Pan

by Mississippi, in Rez

graveyard... his enormous

Rabbit-corpus.  Heavy Everyman

skittered, skating on ice

unswift as raven-wing

(Po-boy, kow-towing

Whitman’s rust-mold Providence

under the night-shade of Cautantowwit).

Earth shaken by thunder,

horns of Minotaur – 

titanic labyrinth of lies (knit

by yon dull orange cur, on fire).

Outcast beyond these walls

Jerusalem worm-hurls

against the black hole (central pyre

                *

of Man’s propensity to murder)

– bearing her true report

like tattered gun-shot

pennant under murk of war.

These damaged epitaphs of pride

& shame (twin Boanerges

buried for albino

snow-contagion).  No crypt can hide,

no script elide.  Vermilion Thunderbird

wheels down to Red Wing

tallying everything

& reckoning each deadman’s ford –

plumb eye of blistered Galilee,

eye of the hurricane.

Out of the depths, someone

traces an arc of palm, for Henry –

skipping from the sea like royalty

(posthumous Davy for

posterity).  Sea-floor

of grey Jonah.  Ocean-reality.

From Queequeg’s casket, like Osiris-

tomb, the rose tattoo

(framed by two-man canoe

of Manitou) slowly rises –

sweet grail of sunken Paradise.

The maze of Ariadne

beams from Milky Way –

meek penny-glow (seal’s copper glaze).

4.30.17

concrete Cleopatra

RESURRECTION CEMETERY

The river is calm, like a brown mirror

on the vernal equinox.

Moving through bifocals

of that lovable double oval (dear

Franklin Ave. Bridge).  Gliding

from Ojibwa marsh,

a trickle out of harsh

winters... a fluent continuum (abiding

parchment years, the tides of March).

On this sparse Minneapolis

spring morning, under clumps

of woolly cloud-cover, her twin M-arch

might make a 2-seat kayak for a monarch

(Manitou, Big Wind) –

swelling from wing-finned

goldfish to a whale (or Jonah’s ark).

The flimsy grey wool threads a quipu

knot.  Stravinsky’s right

to be so wrong : the lights

are snuffing out all over Europe...

the little gypsy girl must dance

to death (so we might live).

The crowd roars, GIVE.

Ariadne’s thread enwraps the lance

of Theseus, the hunter.  MINOTAUR

IS RUST (feed him tar-cakes

until he bust).  Stakes

are high – each gets an equal share

                     *

or else.  It’s the American way.

So speak plain English.

Royal myth be not the dish

we wish for now – try testimony.

They killed the King of the Milky Way –

lofty Melchizedek

(& his Irish sidekick,

his brother).  Sacrificial hay

for infinite Corn Goddess, maybe?

Don’t think so.  It is

& means to a dead end (his,

theirs, ours)... rewind the anthropology.

Anonymous shadow tilts toward sundown.

Ghost dance under trees.

He coming back, in threes –

the buried man, with his Papillon.

The guy in Resurrection Cemetery

(never gone, still here).

Can’t kill someone who never

died – so let’s undo all this necessary

violence (stand your ground, Hamlet

– until Ophelia’s dead gone).

The Shadow Knows (someone

whispers – my Dad?).  The blood is let.

It’s an old warped story, on the loom

of Time.  Peruvian lamb

sandwich, taken for a ham... a

concrete Cleopatra (equal to her doom).

3.20.17

Sketch (from canoe)

BEE-STING

The rough sketch reaches back

so deep into beforetimes

like those caves of limestone

dolphins, walking... some refraction

in the water-filter flips Time over

into clear half-moonlight,

where Word-is-Psyche

typed into a graveyard clover

prints snowfeet along Minnesota

River, cemetery

ridge of Irish faery-

land (Apollinaire in Georgia).

Hard to explain.  Grace Ravlin

what thou lovest well

this garden, under spell

of summer sun (your Washington

laboratory).  Someone brave

magnanimous & kind

who vaults the epic rind

from orange threadspan (architrave

of salt-blue ice).  An Ocean State

of mind, where ships sail

slowly down to Coral

Sound, abeam some forthright

rabbit lighthouse, trembling.

Forgive me, it is so.

Earth is very slow

a-borning.  Here (one dead bee-sting).

10.19.15

Life's unwritten history

BRUEGEL SCENE

Summer loses weight, becomes

translucent at the end.

Sunlight slants graveward

with a farewell glance, & autumn’s

trumpet-call is barely audible

amid hilarious

alarums in the circuits

of the starlings (swarming, risible).

& so you wonder where you are

on earth.  John Berryman’s

in jasper, John’s in grey;

Man’s in a graveyard green (so far

from here).  Splat in a corner

one cloud-turtle (from

Iona) lifts her drum-

shell from the sea – almost another

comber, very salt & watery.

I’ll join the starling circus,

friends – I’ll whistle us

to Minneapolis, SE of Rimini.

That raven’s in the Bruegel scene.

His glance is like one

wintry oeuil upon

her apron – by the deep tureen,

at dawn, in the spare refectory;

feathered in soft silence

on a wall of remembrance.

What’s up, Dad?  Unwritten history.

9.21.15

September 21