magnolia blooms

MAY-MONTH

Again, the quiet of a cloudy day

in Minneapolis.  May Day

in quarantine.  This is the day

maidens in flowery garlands would ply

their threads around the blossoming May-

pole.  Hobo is not Falstaff, I say –

he is the King of May;

a blooming almond be his rod of sway.

*

Meanwhile, archaic Hen the Rain King

by circuitous path hath circled

back to River Road.

His early neighborhood – passing

his mother’s house, her father built

– that Master of Grain Elevators

(Ravlin, J.H.).  His crop rotator’s

resting now.  River-tongues will gather silt.

An old man hoists his memories

upon his back.  Their weight,

grown heavy, will grow light…

Grace is a salty providential breeze.

I hear the whisper of her crane-

bone flute – the drone

of one trompette marine…

Guillaume’s grande dame will rise again.

*

& I sense Osip’s revolving sisters,

melding gradually their

sarabande.  Rose flowers

share circumference (O lento tenderness).

*

I never want to leave this house.

Orioles sing in the forest

under their shade palimpsest…

(oaks’ rattling snare-susurrus).

*

A fresh breeze brings the May-month in.

The sisters ring their double wreath.

The young hawthorn on Fisher St.

is blooming pink.  The almond

in her dark eyes glows, her smile

of Sheba-Shekinah… the lady

of the Song of Songs (spry

tree of Galilee, in Rhody Isle).

*

The gawky prehistoric gingko

Granddad planted is

still there (at 1615).  Its

golden Memphis fans billow

in breezes off the Mississippi.

The asphodel, acacia…

the acorns greening, high

over the house… & now I see

her – cartwheeling across a field

like some sapling tornado!

Sophie or Pocahontas?  O

that Gravesend kid – her diamond shield

my royal seal!  Her acorn coracle

my Isis barge – her eye

my Argo’s midnight sky!

Across the Black Sea of a world-debacle

shining (congruent) one American ray –

my Henry-church, our 

Churnagogue… one flour-

cattedrale – out of spiritual clay!

*

Like simple San Fran in Frisco

he crost himself, at height

of orange Golden Gate –

where Juliet booked… O

her last, self-cancelled flight.  & Henry

built a rude crossroad

in old Rhode Eye.  Sold

on Roger’s fine distinction – worldly

profiting & holy soul-seeking be not

the same.  Yet they are wed

by law-abiding God

into a single providential knot –

that normative & innocent new world

as old as children underneath a tree

chanting together of a chaste reality

where Love is as the Ocean – pearled

in tides of light (beneath the moon,

beyond the moon).  This charity

stands like a tall pine tree,

from earthy root up to invisibility… one

Union of pure dream-substantiality;

good will, reflected in the hearts

of humankind – with all our arts

in-woven there (O graceful tapestry).

*

The little magnolia on River Road

by Granddad’s elegant abode

unleashed her winter load

of fluttery wings (Primavera mode).

Persephone, Eurydice go underground

& Beatrice to the sky…

a grain of wheat must die

so spring’s magnolia blooms abound.

May Day… the worker bees unite.

The earth itself is in labor

fired in the kiln of Evermore.

Communion loaves of clay ignite.

Everything spins in the green matrix.

Liberty & justice, equity

& equilibrium… an origami

fold of love & intellect – deep Genetrix

a whirl of fiery faery feet – Elohim

twirling on galactic rim

with ocarina Jonah-hum,

to glaze the grail-stone with her hymn.

Sophie was making rivers on the patio,

& found a black-brown woolly bear –

small furry embryonic caterpillar

searching for a leaf to call ground zero.

Henry was looking for an oak-bole too.

At end of May, at Pentecost,

on Dante’s birthday, JFK’s… lost

Restoration RI zone?  Hagia Sophia? – YOU.

5.1.20

by John Gould's oak

ANCIENT MELODY

The air so clear, & the evening moon

a bright silver penny

as in the children’s story

walking along my mother’s old lane

(River Road).  Looking back through time

toward rust-bronze Penny

glinting in the well… you & me,

sweet riverbend friend (Rose I. William).

On middle C, in common time, imperfect

we will tap the ivories –

some Memphis honey blues

for Milkman, gone today (perfect

in charity).  I remember how we clung together

in the greenhouse, long time gone.

Now distance is the quarantine… yet

only temporary, Pen.  We’ll meet somewhere

by snowflake relativity – that Providence

where every soul has dignity,

disintegrated from the sea

of Ocean River (Osip’s salience – a

wee raznochinets bubble of pure silvery glee).

The sky.  So clear tonight.

Transparent memory.  A light

chord lingers in the heart (soul liberty

the ancient melody).  Freedom, equality,

respect… humanity.

Like Newport’s Jeremy – buried by

John Gould’s oak, in Hemel Hempstead (age 90).

4.4.20

My mother & the Longfellows

Just an afterthought to previous post : I share a bit of family lore regarding the Longfellows.

The poet Henry W. Longfellow was no stranger to sorrow and tragedy.  His line "into each life some rain must fall" is an understatement in his case (he was widowed twice; his first wife Mary died after a miscarriage; his second, Frances, after burns suffered in a freak accident).

Longfellow was endeared to his six children; his old classic The Children's Hour christens one of them "laughing Allegra".

Allegra eventually married and had children of her own.  One of her daughters married a doctor from Texas, and they settled in a house on the River Road, in Minneapolis, next door to my grandparents - where my mother Mary Ravlin grew up, with her brother and sisters.  My mother became friends with their children (Allegra's grandchildren).  She relates the story that once, when Allegra was visiting her family in Minneapolis, their furnace backed up and filled the house with smoke.  The Longfellows migrated next door until the problem was fixed and the house aired out; Allegra spent the night at my grandparents'.

A few years later, the Longfellows invited my mother (who was about 12 at the time) to accompany them on a vacation to Maine.  They took the train from Minneapolis, and eventually reached the Longfellow home in Portland (now a museum).  There the Longfellows brought out some little glasses of sherry, and my mother had her first taste of alcohol - which she took with great trepidation, since both her parents were absolute Iowa teetotalers.

The Longfellow House (Portland, Maine)

Something rich & strange

RIVER STREET

                                      i.m. Edwin Honig

That Bluejay with a raven on

his shoulder, that trickster

was a local fixture –

like cornered kid on stony Roman

pavement, Maggie.  Now you see him

in your mind’s eye, whom you knew

from streamy childhood (blue

was the mussel surf, where the Rephilim

stamped a sweet circumference

with giant feet). & Babe

the Blue Ox, & Gabriel

w’hm seraphim, & the fish fragrance

of White Bear Lake (miroir today)...

all the waters in the world

seem to coalesce now, pearled

to a cedar point of windy memory.

Only the shrill cree-crow of the tall

iron swing on River Street

reminds you of the weight

of all that autumn.  One free fall...

Weigh, anchor.  To the bottom you shall go,

infant infantryman –

loaded with diamond

mondiale.  A Seekonk conch will carry you

across her retina’s black sail, into

the womb of Imago.

Full fado five... just so,

Pessoa.  La vida es sueño.  Ephphatha.

9.4.15

Paul Bunyan & Babe the Blue Ox