sumac muse

AUTUMN SUMAC

The new Solomon will show

a spirit of discernment.

No more time spent

on wastes of shame, Sheba – no.

He might see the Parousia

if he takes care.

His friend Hobo (where’d

he go?) will likely not carouse

far, yah.  He’s by the river,

as per.  Autumn sumac

beads along railroad track.

Dry cotton bones, monsieur.

François might join him there,

under gibbous moon,

Paris monsoon...

cornered at the bridge of the stair.

Amigo Frank – piano soul of Frisco,

tempering tomorrow.

Palming witness so

to stigma of twinship, boy-o.

Thunderbird collects herself

over Red Wing swamps.

Imperial affliction stamps

[available in lobby]. Guelf

to Ghibelline, Dante wit Beatrice...

Moses and Elijah frame

their thorny throne (slim

acmé of suave pillars).  Touché.

9.24.18

yodeling in Mendelssohn

LITTLE MIRROR

The mind is like a little mirror

& the word is like

a mirror in that lake.

We skated there, one ancient year –

across the icy glass, Heidi.

In Mendelssohn, sweet

neighborhood (complete

Garden of Cyrus now, in memory).

A melody of day-lilies cheers Henry

Hobo (by the Mississippi).

He might be somebody

you know – booked into penitentiary?

Sol.  Solo.  Absent Sheba

browses in another aisle

(archived in old Rhode Isle).

Her ship’s in search of Colchia

lambswool – seamless gold web,

mute mutuality –

griot reality

lofted to laughter (on Mount Horeb).

Square triangles of pyramids

fit into portable log

cabin logarithms, Mag.

Your stone’s a tiny tablet, hid

beside that lake, in Galilee –

a solidarity

sodality, a party

writ on water.  Fountain, artistry.

6.27.18

as in a game of hide-&-seek

PINE ARK

Piero the geometer

graphed the perfect dome

(that marvelous human home

& winking sea of gray matter)

beneath the curvature of San Francesco

in Arezzo – a flock of swans

of radiant intelligence

about their Queen, before the portico

(Temple of Solomon).  He’s hidden

as in a game of hide-&-seek

the wooden matrix (meek

logbox from Tree of Life).  When

Helena comes to Jerusalem

she’ll draw it out again –

sliver from a lion’s

paw, grim rib from Adam’s

galley mast.  Constantine dreams

his tiny golden honey-cross.

Mary’s Pneuma-moss

wells in the quiet kitchen... gleams.

Sweet psyche-legends circulate

around a forgotten rock

in Magdala.  The flock

is scatter-gathered... salty fate

& jittery salts plank-walk the yellow-

black monarchs of love.

Their cedar treasure-trove

is one pine ark (Jonah chi-rho).

7.28.16

of the clay peoples

PEACOCK’S EYE

Path P stretch in six directions

out of Cairo, Huck,

sez Jim – any way you look.

One of them north-south junctions,

I reckon.  There was a labyrinth

of red clay trenches –

dead men in its clenches

like flies hung in a spider’s tent

– heavy that clay, so heavy!

Like the bottom of the sea.

How could a little child be

dancing in such dismal gravy?

She’s Pueblo, of the clay peoples;

they put away wrath before

the sun go down, f’sure.

Lookee there.  & through the peephole

of his fingertips I saw (obscurely

as that garden of Sheba)

a lightning pathway – Sun-Ra

threshing floor – arisen merrily

from ripened Flanders wheat (so

melancholy).  Like Van Gogh

seized with a fury-glow

of happiness... Persephone?  O

yes!  Threading her crane-dance

through a peacock’s eye –

purple Hagia Sophia’s

woolly poncho-swirl (at cave-entrance).

5.24.16

There's a whole in the bucket

PLAYGROUND SWING

When Joachim Fiore, hermit-monk

hidden in heel of Italy,

after many a fasting-day

frescoed his Fauve raptor-hawk

like a rainbow-feathered calumet

smoking the end of aeons...

When the dust returns

from whence it came (Osiris sunset-

raft, veering to purple bull’s-eye)

& bones of bearberry

revert to green hay

& Alma the Corn Maid heaves a sigh

for Land o’Lakes (their vanishing,

twinkling, hexagonal

bye-bye)... then shall we all

rise too, in a Sabbath playground swing

of the Pleiades – & wheel with Mama

Ursa Major, in a New

World Symphony (Ojibwa

Lullaby, scribbled on your way

from Minnehaha, Anthony).  Because

the whole in the silver bucket

is a river-song (Pawtuxet,

maybe) sweeter than ever was –

is your redemption-hymn, O Solomon.

Sheba the Buffalo Lady

knows it, as does Maggie

Galilee... The Eagle from the Oven-Sun.

3.10.16

Leaf to leaf, door to door

OATMEAL BANTER

Light eddying through layers

of overcast gray sky

whispering, simplify.

Willow’s underleaf, lyre-players?

Silver.  Copper-gray the color

of this beech’s mammoth shade,

whose granite roots cascade

light (leaf to leaf, & door 

to door).  Motionless in time-

space, emitting signs

her gray hide underlines

in graphite (stubborn Balaam’s

Hoover-prophecy).  The beech,

the book, will not be moved.

Ink trail of raven-dove...

bare gouache, still ground (beseech

thee, spare thy headstrong mule) –

O break the prison mold,

snow-blind brain-cold!

Where father & son meet (fool

with fool) beneath the malachite

green veins, gray matter

of bran (or oatmeal banter).

Strange personal jade wight –

shade-mutter, everlasting

Sheba.  Clouds gather

overhead – weather

lit thunder (shackle-blasting).

2.4.16

See you in September

A poem in which I manage to condemn, in the space of one quatrain, both ISIS & Miley Cyrus.

(Some background : my maternal grandmother was born in West Branch, Iowa.  There is a statue of the goddess Isis in a park there.  Herbert Hoover was also from West Branch; the statue was a gift from the Belgian government for his services to their country after World War I.)

LACUSTRINE CIRCLE

This delicate native wanderer

like a dusty monarch (rusty-

orange) might just be

traveling incognito somewhere –

on white-winged moccasin, from

flower to flower – her agate

glance like Grandma’s (great) –

in West Branch, near the Iowa farm.

I dream of a different Isis there,

no punitive Hooverville;

another Cyrus too (there will

be no clicking Mileyhahas to prepare

with die-cut revelry your family’s

despair).  She will be veiled

only with cloudy knowledge

of the bright round pearl; salt seas

will anchor plumb her understanding;

Solomon will test

& be tested, & she

will best him (at the Ontario Fling

& other things).  A whippoorwill

accompanies their evening;

Caroline will be singing

like a wren from the oaks, a royal

Charlie... like a gal you met once –

Cal? – along the shore...

– that lacustrine circle where,

of yore, the monarch floats, hunts...

    9.1.15

"Isis.  Goddess of Life"

Don't ask me

Not much to say about this, except that it's part of a series, and that Stephano and Nunzio are father & son from Sicily (my regular haircut here in Providence).  "Agnes" is Agnes Eizenberger, from Vienna, my Uncle Jim's onetime companion.  (Also thinking of another icon-maker & diagram artist, Agnes Martin.)

VIENNA VEINS

Klimt was a kind of crooked wicket

out on a creaky limb

in Cricket City (rim

of Rimini, Parisian rivulet).

Gold.  Vienna veins of Ravlin

violins (we were there,

Agnes).  Do not compare.

It’s only an American Robin

Redbreast, hooded, yodeling...

he’s calling out your name.

Not Stephano (fair game

for Fame) nor Nunzio (clipping

the locks that flood across your face)

– though they are near.  The Boot

strides on.  The man is moot.

Your Crown is Everwhirr – mesh-lace

of spy-veil, ambling the source...

a poverty of materials

in a land of burials

& sunshine (Italy, of course).

Klimt limns the anguish in your eyes.

Through vales of Solomon

or Sheba, all the broken

kingdoms, poppy-fields (Grandpappy’s

ripe Epiphany).  Pain circulates

through straitened means

somehow – corny Earth-scenes

beyond our ken (Thanksgiving plates).

8.17.15

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907)

more apocryphal Fontegaia.

21

 
Solomon (a sort of Orpheus) could talk to animals
called all the birds   to a Middle East conference
except disobedient Hoopoe   (with his impudent
crest) lit out for the territory   sent back signals

 
New-Founde Land   past Sabaday Lake   upstream
from Nile   & soon   elliptical (circumferential)
messages   began to emanate (confidential) from
there   rumors & telegrams   (Is Queen Bea On

 
the Make?)   Sol (looking for chess partner)
became intrigued & (in time) intrigue became him   
too   for the searchlight Queen   was like   a slim
flicker of sword-blade   ever on his tail (still master

 
of defense   & flighty game) she showed the moon
to his sunshine   until the day of the (unlooked-for)
eclipse   when she jumped him   like a sidewinder
(blindsided) black   to the whites of his eyes (one

 
blinkered mountain-cock   one shady   Lady Grey)
Only a wild goose chase   for the wisest man alive?
Well (spake Sun   in a Milky Way)  their beehive
was productive   Earth bore fruit thereof (away

 
downstream)   Honeychile   sunk the foundation
for a sweet return   & in that milky (mnemonic) haze
suffusing   all the suspiring trees   ringleted, maze-
feathered Hoopoe   looped-a-loop over his friend

 
Raven   & as light grew stronger   &   pervaded
everywhere   its gauzy lance (through magnifying
glass) tapped Leah's mane   Natasha's limping spring
tattooed the track (flagroot)   where they waded in

Fontegaia, still buzzing...

20

 
If there is to be   a Jubilee indeed
it will seep like sap   from the reign of Pax
at ease there   on her footrest (stacks
of worn-out shields)   recumbent on her seedy

 
couch   & it will be deep-lasting, steady-flowing
like an Amazon or Nile   carrying along all sorts
of vessels   large & small   freighted with quaint
& local cargo   with room in the hold   for going

 
far into the interior   of summer   & it will be
something like this   elusiveness   in the backyard
after work   the day's heat lifting   when the shade
of the maples (my vision focusing)   seems (faintly,

 
barely) to open   another eye   behind my eyes
something   dilates (almost)   an eye of memory
& this fragile overlay   of now & then   is sweet
to me   & slightly bitter too   (an almond joy

 
from Mendelssohn)   & Jubilee will not be solely
this or that   but the whole orchestra   in concert
we want no less   than childhood happiness   afloat
in the midst   of a gentle civilization   Heidi &

 
Henry   astride their   duelling pianos   practicing
for each other across   Arthur Street   & the hoopoe
(through a hula-hoop)   shuttling across their   purple
passages   love-sick like   Solomon & Sheba   testing

 
each other   with spelling bees &  hard questions
while the bees build archways   of paired eyebrows
sun & moon   silver & gold   blue & green &
rise overhead   in streams of   free B-flight formations

[note : Mendelssohn is a neighborhood in Hopkins, MN. Pax, here, refers to the figure in the Siena Town Hall fresco.]

So goes the summer.

This section has a little puzzle in it. There are several obscure oddities here; however - to the first person who can identify the particular little code I'm thinking of, I will send a book!

12

 
Lost sailors in late far extremities
(deserted) dream to the antipodes.
A pendulum swims wide above a void
where butterflies solo (perplexing sky).

 
Ambushed by ambitious shrubbery
(trysted credence of disabled cane)
an edict's submarine reverberation
mutters (barely audible) its remedy.

 
Invisible (veiled arcs of curving ribs)
grave weight it fans - heart's hollowness;
waiting (reed-girt, ruddy bell) to bless
the crimped coin of the realm (dark Sheba's

                     
                  *

 
tinder star).  She makes her bed with bedouins
weft in the iris of a camel's eye (otfe);
greenrusted purple meteorite - ray
inviolate - she is a Bess in the abyss,

 
pent Penny in the well.  A sailor's ark
she rocked so (in the air) on Ararat
an iris flowered overhead - the fiat
of the desert was in flood - its park

 
prismatic (minuscule dew).  And so it was.
Bell-flower, concord's covenant.  Solemn
Solomon's-seal.  Oasis-pendulum.
The quiet crickets' rusty susurrus.

& so today's illustration (Dove Street):

4

 
A washed-out February light   winter floating away slowly
and the sound of a mourning dove   one   one-one
mingled with elisions of an iron brake   life’s nonsense
and my notes   cars on the road

 
a world gone quiet   in my mind   (preparation
for annunciation)   spring’s in the womb
of sister-dove:  limping slowly on the barren earth
she goes   as if she had a stone in her shoe

 
maybe   a stone fallen from heaven
landed in a camel-canopy   Abram’s otfe
out of Ur for good   across the sandy waste
under the fringed silk   she sits in shadow

 
cooing to the warriors   urging them on   to the end
of their beginnings   all the way to Jordan
or Jerusalem   where they guard the black stone
of the scapegoat   (father, son and   intervening angel)

 
another stone   too heavy for heaven   and buried deep
in your corrupted heart, O   horseman, knight:
love is reason   and reason is love,   she coos
and this equality   brings Jubilee,   she whispers

 
where seven iron rings   circle the sacred city
each ring manacled to its own   unbreakability
(like weapons of mass destruction   guarding
weapons of mass destruction)   from the days of John

 
until now    the Kingdom has come with violence
violent men    take it by force   but it shall not be so
with you   murmurs the fragile   enshrouded bird
(grey wing   buried in grey stone   furled   in black)


         
                                       2.26.04