restoration will abolish dice

HOBO-MAP

The calm oval of the bridge

floats in the stream

like bubble on a beam.

A fringe of green trees edge

the shoreline... memory of summer.

Water seeks its own

level.  Every stone

melts in its riverbed.  Your humor,

Hobo, settles into Ocean State

as silky Mississippi

seeps into the mighty

estuary of the Gulf (trompette

marine).  So your melodious

escapism is salted too,

with fire – there ain’t no

place that doesn’t see you, Mose.

Cradle him in your coracle

of creamy wisdom, Sophie –

let light from a tree

of galaxies be his menorah (Huck,

that is – Huck Finn).  Your soaring

arc (beside Cahokia)

hovers, a stealth utopia –

eagle-prong, heat-seeking

beak from heaven.  Like that rapt

golden raptor, diving

on rainbow wing

toward his vanishing point

                *

(infinity) which Joachim (mulish

Franciscan hermit)

signed, Age of the Spirit...

Fusion of molten phoenix, starfish

turtledove... risen to dance

lightfooted on the grave

of death (one palm-wave

soothes her brow-circumference).

Only leave him his primitive wood-burnt

etching from Rhode Island.

Someone might understand

its clambit rhythm somehow – learnt

by beachcomber, drifted to sound

of sea-wash... steady laving

for pain... life-saving

Island Rose (from rocky ground).

The Word sings out of rosy shell chambers,

complex inflected folds,

ineffable.  She breaks molds

by clash of scalloping tambours –

beams smiling splendor in a glance;

beholds the Earth, clipped

into chains, gripped

by small potentates (from Bossy Manse)...

My hobo-map of Paradise

includes Newport (Jackie

& Jack wed, merrily);

my restoration will abolish dice.

11.6.17

at the local cinema

GREEN MOUND

I met the surviving Saarinen,

Eric (from California)

at the local cinema,

showing his film about those Finns –

Eero, Eliel – who competed

to complete a monument

at navel of a continent.

Congratulations E. Saarinen, stated

the telegram.  Nobody knew

which one had won...

uniting father & son

in gratifying mystery.  Eric, too –

the latecomer, the odd man out.

Hurt psyche of a boy

forsaken for his father’s toy,

dream, rest.  Took roundabout

lifetime to ravel up & down

that furious steel arc.

Papa went into the dark

before the triumph of its dawn

upsoaring vault over St. Louis;

yet the late film follows the

mammal-forms – waves, hollows –

Eero spread across that Fifties

U.S. gridscape, breathing curves

& ribs so delicately

bearing gravity

they lift the heart out of its grooves

                  *

toward self-transcending levity –

high tensile alcoves

where swirly flocks of doves

shape octave-looping solidarity –

a wider vista of the whole

concordant cosmic good –

a brother & sisterhood

of green, rose red & lilac soul.

Her intricate diamond quipu knot

rays out in six directions.

An acorn salience,

an Oklahoma holm-oak plot.

An atom from a honey-bole.

A seed rooted in sky.

(Suzuki harmony

sounds deep Hiroshima bell-toll.)

Wayfaring Eric, leftover grandson

remembers his abandoned

mother, at the end

of the reel.  Displaced... the unknown

child.  Sculptor of turtleshell

glide-shelters... curling

strands of hair, unfurling

chords of clay (who softly swells

a lightweight matrix).  Tender tower

of color, glowing through

the fading film of you

& me... green mound, light-freckled bower.

9.27.17

spoke of a water-wheel

SALT WAVE

Along the riverbank, these rich

dark green moss-terraces;

a miniature forest

spreading wide along each niche

of Pliocene sea-limestone.

Archive of mollusc-whorl

& sea-worm spiral

layers of plastered ivory linen.

An infinitely tiny bronze

french horn accompanies

trompette marine – Willie’s

gauzy smoke-signal de Paris;

petrified remains of carven

calumet from Red Wing,

maybe.  This is nothing

like a Pipestone atlatl, Raven

croaks.  Spoke of a water-wheel,

more likely.  Jessie O’s

clay potter swells

with gentle pats & frills – feel

how her spine of Fish-Man surfaces

profound supremacy of whale!

A wheel that will not fail

springs to its trickle-task, washes

the wilderness from every face

until its light-green glory

meshes Ezekiel’s story –

wheel wends with wheel (a carapace

                *

of pearl enfolds that golden bough)

until a plangent joy

beams from unfurling J

in spokes of rose aye-aye lands now –

one Great Red Spot, so thundery

& jovial – one Yahweh-

Manitou, in one streamway –

the Rio del Espiritu, at play

across prairies & meadowlands

in centrifugal fugue –

day-lily orange bugle-

calls, mauvelets a monarch understands –

until at last the torch of Liberty

lifts from her copper shroud

to chant moss-green out loud

& set the Mississippi free...

As when the labyrinth of St. Louis

glimmers wheat-gold amid

deep shade (Monk’s Mound)

– & signs the tidal drone (commence!)

to shift the Earth from fraudulence –

fallacious Midas-usura

whose Minotaur is US-

R-US – whose glow of carbon flatulence

burns orange rage (from White House

into every gilded cage)

& all the world’s a stage

for strutting tyros in malevolence...

                *

Peace is another way.  Humility.

How Eeyore-mule (San Fran)

transmutes to Eero Saarinen.

With the power  of soul   any-

thing is possible   the tacit poverty

of yearning love  bent

by Br’er Francesco’s Lent

into a welcoming   equality

chaste eye of akme equity

out of an almond branch

in Petersburg   will launch

once more   peals of humanity

from the great Rose of Providence

wheeling & swinging wide

with Chartres sunlight   O glide

with me   downstream, Hobo   immense

Pacific beckons   from the galaxies

where kind Melchizedek

pours milk of live-oak

acorn mead   shares bread   from nursing

YHWH’s heart   sweet Manitou’s   delight.

Enfolded in the subtle veil

of golden fleece   & gray whale-

oil   that infinite fine safety-net

swings like a hammock in the breeze

beneath twin flaming pillars

where a starfish falls

& lifts her   from salt wave   to Paradise

7.19.17

sleek as raven-eel

LICHEN DOME

The last snow before Easter.

Sophie’s footprints etch

a squarish spiral sketch...

still photo (lento, Bruegelish faster).

From long distance, every

bird’s-eye view can fuse

with every other (sans

confusion).  Each waltzing orrery

links hands in Sydney – under those figs

whose natural majesty

anchors her panoply,

a fractal Dr. Octahydra (sky-digs

of Southern Cross, O dusky lady).

Bends toward akme

of the starfish now, Henry.

Meteor Hurtle Aboriginal Day.

The stone fell (odd fellow, ultramarine).

Fey otter – furry,

sleek as raven-eel –

into the gilded net of Saarinen

(Sibelius?  Some other fin).

Architrave swept (over

canoe).  Windhoover,

agile Harry Grizzly (buoy-woman,

boo-hoo – smoking Camel,

him calumet).  A Caliban

or Cain (Abel).  A Son

of Man – sad Prospero (blithe Ariel

                  *

is in the pine).  Where be the porpoise

here, Dauphin?  Your plow

scratches the surface now.

Her keen lengthens toward Paradise

(swell memory of Outremer).

The palm-lines slacken,

ease... shade thickens then

toward Wingy Rock (you know where,

Coatlicue).  The cedar forest

where the monarch dies,

lives.  Memorize

my speech, for its spooky taste

of dead bees (Finnish sacrifice).

There’s the arch, like

a prow (turn on the mike

now).  Spin the jenny, throw the dice.

Snow mantles the martyr’s tomb.

Green lichen dome

where breakers foam

from galaxies of Mendelssohn (home

run).  I don’t know where to go

from here.  The scared poem

swims down Rio del Hum

until your blues become a hollow

rhumba-Rome (flight-bud unknown).

Whispers vespers... purrs.

Her bop-team be yours,

egg-woman (inner-tube pontoon).

4.11.17

Abba Tor & Eero Saarinen

GREEN EYE

                                i.m. Abba Tor (1923-2017)

If this roof were to fall on my head now

I would die a happy man,

said Eero Saarinen

to Abba Tor (Kennedy Airport, 1962).

The engineer won’t stand on cardboard –

number, weight & measure.

Concrete is dumb.  (For sure.)

It doesn’t know for whom it’s being poured.

Let’s use this requirement to let some light in.

Skylight ribbons through

the Jet Age double-U.

They builded better than they knew.  Someone

whispers like a humming bird beneath

French limestone gravity –

gray shadow cavity,

the leaden heart of black corroded wreath.

The terminal’s long-empty now

(hotel-to-be).  But the sound

of twine cats cradling profound

equilibrium is as a Finnish prow

of voices laboring in harmony –

it lifts a catenary prong

where the cartwheel song

creaks like rust in clay, or an eye

from the bottomland (circling palm)...

Green eye of Liberté

from Providential bay –

Columbia’s rose wheel, her feathered helm.

2.24.17

(NY Times obituary for Abba Tor here.)

down by the Rio Espiritu

CAVERN-KITCHEN

Cottonwoods mime autumnal Golgotha

down by the Rio Espiritu –

Eli, Eli, why have you...?

– branching-out concavex vesica

(tree become history).  Now the mirror

of round Galilee reverts

as when murky Po River’s

backward film flows to Ravenna shore;

magnetic gravity of Mary

reels the molting dove

into the tumult of

new-found Columbia’s eyrie –

cavern-kitchen full of Piero’s light,

her mummer’s earthbound feet

tap blessings to the fleet

in spires of crane-dance patter-flight.

The almond is a little tree

whose acorn eye marks

spoken blooms – arcs

from a sparkling diamond sea

triangulating stainèd glass

from humped Cahokia

to Saarinen-eye.

A speeding Spirit of St. Louis

soars to Notre Dame & Chartres;

steep-waltzing Trinity,

one 1-3-2 will be

your eagle-masque (dive, mère-maître).

10.12.16

light gleams in Colchis

ANCIENT KEY

                                No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?

The spiral molluscs from Precambrian seabed

in the limestone facing by the door

remind me of you; the bent lyre

of the cottonwood by the riverbank led

me back to you too – bent over your clay

wheel, shaping the river-mud

into a smiling imago.  We tread

your maze toward home, thread-spun Ariadne.

That Mexican Last Supper diorama –

chipped clay bread-&-wine feast

you repaired... bones of a beast

lifted from bloodlines, toward a panorama.

Light from a distant prison window

gleams in Colchis.  Maximus

knots three bright strands

beneath a keystone arch – mingled so,

they mark a brow with perfect diamond,

one spark of dancing flame.

Perfection is the frame

of right accomplishment – the ripe almond

of what thou lovest well.  Well-founded

Gateway Arch, the light flows

east to west – what Rhodos grows

for liberty, for justice (lightning-grounded,

here & now).  Crossed in St. Louis

by Rio del Espiritu – & there

one eerie soaring flare

of Raven passing through (southwest)

                    *

inks the last answering quipu

to that sweet hypothesis

of sea-blue Maximus –

the imago, a kind of kindly Manitou-

insignia.  Seal of copper Penny

gleaming from the bottomland;

Columbian wish-well (one hand-

eye palms its moss-green rim... see?).

Southwest, southwest... Cautantowwit,

drawn like a Malcolm, like

a black-orange monarch

through the double dove-doors of that

moonlit mirror, into Mexico –

to touch the orange checkmate

of an azure Golden Gate.

Stubborn, impoverished, soft Frisco

mule!  Lifting the ancient key

of human harmony

again, for you, for me –

netting the breathing sail of safety

there, at last – for Juliet,

for John, for Weldon,

Malcolm, Hart... for everyone

yearning, unreconciled, disconsolate;

& across vast timespace hollows

her winged hands & face

stir courage to embrace –

Grace penetrates the Gates (& Rose).

8.24.16

& so concludes Ravenna Diagram, bk 5

BRIGHT PENNY

J was for Juniper (Maia genus,

Jenna) – an ordinary

quiet little tree –

you find them everywhere in Rus,

U.S.  One of the cedar family –

of which great masts are made

in Massa Maritima, she said;

& note the canoe, so beautifully

wrought, that graces this garage

full of rusted implements,

old iron junk (ribs,

tubes, gunnels, disjecta, garbage)...

– no, don’t kiss me now, it’s almost

Valentine’s.  Here’s a letter

in the litter, from your brother

in Minneapolis (him & his boats!) –

expatiating on that Inland Ocean

stretching from Superior’s

index, through Mississippi

dells & vales (his new obsession)

leaving these microscopic spirals

...in the pervasive buttery

limestone underbelly

of the land... seashells, fan-whorls;

epitomized in one moist flesh-toned

stony nave & spire

(near 34th & 34).

Meek modern well-proportioned

masterpiece, harmonic matrix

of father & son (elegant

Eero, eerie Eliel) – bent

Saarinen ark, soaring to Beatrix

rondure... O navigators!  Inching

over gravity waves,

black holes, ripe graves

of wombified Vikings... cinching

one planet with your splintery

kaleidoscopes (wind-

buffeted facets of land

& sea) under Dancing Bear, Polaris!

I would scratch my cartoon of your fellowship

with the circumference

                *

of an almond salience –

one bright Penny’s (legal, tender) skip.

A dove circles the Bay there, Columbia –

where the beats gather

spliced to twine pillar,

shrouds & safety nets of a still Finlandia –

wheeling wings, massed between sea

& cedar palisades,

Pacific rock parades

& sigh of spray... enveloping, visionary

finish at the prow of fiery

sunsets!  & I recall

the rudder of it all –

kind capitan of Little Rhody,

prophet of soul liberty –

gold Independent Man

atop the mobile span

of Providence – abeam with charity!

Wrapped in cloud, the binding peaks

wink now with S.O.S.

Laurentian Divide is

where the waters separate – soul seeks

her Earth, commensurate with hope

– justice of Manitou

sluicing like rain (for you

& me) across wide prairie slope

to live-oak bottomland.  My faint

hen-scratch... mere filament

to trace the lineament

of Kalevala-coracle – St.

Mary’s fishing-boat, or Paul’s

(vain little man, whose plan

would hook Leviathan) –

one rosy ark, riding the squalls

where refugees huddle for warmth & light.

O womb abrim with life,

grail-casket, Raven-knife –

matrix of River’s coppery might –

lift up your little pine apex!

Crown my origami fleet

with fir-green fin – beat

time with silver oar (moon reflex).

2.11.16

Where the crooked sumacs are

BACKWARD THUNDER

The Redeye of these freight cars’

heavy backward thunder

over rubidium crossbars’

X.  Where the crooked sumacs are –

their creaky grey akimbo-structures

(rusty caducei).  Amorpho-

phallus Titanium?  No,

not quite... but ruddy, like Osiris-

Oedipus (up 3-Way Highway,

where the pylons meet).

Eddy Parallactic,

relatively paralytic – all that whey

so massive, bending light around

Caesar’s own seizures,

jade embrasures

(pyramidical, tyrannical, profound).

The iron Bruegel earth turns so,

in snowy dunes.  Until

one feathery perpendicular

percolates up (with bleaker crow).

Light eddied, slow (28, 29...)

where a spring coils

moss-green (oeuil

of Bosch, in Kansas City sun);

where Iris plants meek sovereignty

by Eero-Eeyore Gate – &

Eurydice, come late

May, rose... (tiny Iona tree).

2.2.16

MN Arboretum (Jan. 2016)

Saarinen's tuning-fork

See Gabriel Gudding's excellent essay on the Gateway Arch. I hadn't come across the "tuning-fork" metaphor before, but it made an independent appearance in Lanthanum.

Saarinen synchronicity

Just 11 days shy of 11 months ago, in mid-December 2008, I began writing this long poem Lanthanum, which originated in an odd dream I had had a few days before, about the Gateway Arch monument in St. Louis (something I'd never seen, nor thought about previously).

On Monday, I finished the first book of Lanthanum (1st of a projected 3 volumes). Today I self-published it via Lulu (see previous post). & when I got home from work, & stretched out on the couch, & opened the NY Times... there was an article about a new exhibit at the City Museum of NY : on Eero Saarinen (architect of the Gateway Arch).



The gateway monument, by the way, is in the form of a "catenary arc" - the shape a flexible string or line makes when hung upside-down. Jasper Johns has painted a whole series of works incorporating the catenary arc.

Gateway of dream

I had an odd experience two mornings ago. I woke up thinking about the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO.

Why? I have absolutely no idea. I have never given that particular monument, designed by Eero Saarinen, a moment's thought. I have never visited St. Louis (though the 19th-cent. city of Twain & Melville does show up in a chapter toward the end of the long poem, Forth of July).

In any case, the dream may have set me off in a whole new direction. I am thinking a lot about the relation between poetry & architecture right now. Hoping it will offer me a new way to approach "objectivity". Saarinen's catenary arc (a recurrent image in Forth of July) might offer a model for other things - an example (adjustable, adaptable) of how to "place", integrate or infiltrate poetry in a public world.

Architecture wakes me up. There are a lot of architectonic elements in my poetry over the last 20 yrs. I'm a builder - it runs in the family.