and willows could not hold more

STEADY SOUND

Maple trees aflame by the river.

A lonely bench – Hobo’s?

Siege perilous

for homeless someone (shiver,

anonymous child of cold fortune).

Collateral damages

from various pillages

of community pillars... honorable men...

the violent bear it away.  Wind

blows through pinetops.

A salt wind, like to freeze.

& leaves turn bloody at the end

of October.  Washington surveys

Shawnee Ohio hills.

Marshals militia drills,

rankled by Crown authorities.

His real estate’s on shaky ground.

Who owns land?  Who owns

sea.  Of his bones

are coral made.  O steady sound

of middle C – circumference

& center of the keys.

The 88, a breeze

from Cairo paradise (our Providence).

Who be that aye-aye from before

the beginning of tomorrow?

C-Jonah beyond sorrow.

Sister-dove.  Your soft sheep-door.

10.7.18

Hobo's dream-sponge

MILK-CRATE

The pearl shines at the bottom of the harbor

as a lamp glows in the darkness.

Color of St. Francis’

donkey (silver-grey, St. Thomas More).

Henry’s church is in the grey-scale too;

a weathered pebble, like

an unknown soldier (Psyche-

cloud, veiling the ocean’s blue).

Bright pennants of the jungle world

(green, orange, black) are

silky glass, refracting back

primary triplets of an orb unfurled –

gold sun, red clay, & midnight sea.

Her mouth is milky ivory

from Santa Giulia, in Brescia...

her parabolic harmony dovetails for me

into a grail from good grey Elephant

(whose queen is dark & comely

Africa).  So Henry’s comedy

plumbs bottomland; its hierophant

is Hobo in disguise, pearl-diving

from the Golden Gate;

his Beatrice-Juliet

is Orpheus-Eurydice – is every living

soul, sleeping to swim the wake

of Lake Victoria.

Birth-rite of Jonah –

rock-dove sparked for Zion’s sake

                *

& all Creation’s sign of Noah.

Suddenly, like lightning

we are made – brightening

kids from adamant stone – Aloha,

planet-people!  Welcome to Providence!

A grey Rabbi heeds

my mumbling... new needles

green the stems of an immense

Jerusalem spear-flower... Juno

to Juneteenth, July to Jubilee,

the fallow air grows milky

& the Glory of the Lord will show

petals of pink & indigo

before too long.  Behold

the twin mirror-doors of bold

St. Thomas – he who was slow

to believe.  Now the dream-sponge

out of Resurrection Cemetery

sucks Lazarus like Henry

into a mystery play.  Plunge,

Cautantowwit-Raven, into the deep

Black Sea.  A Thunderbird

breaches your salty word

in spumy clouds of Neva-Sleep,

& Woodpecker hammers out Twin

Oak’s mandorla-canoe –

a Restoration Day, for you.

Casket of Lazarus – a milk-crate tin.

6.19.17

arise, iris

GOLDEN RULE

An iris opened on the first morning

in June.  Like a Byzantine

empress, rich purple &

gold – her petals butterfly wings

or flying buttresses at Chartres.

In the mirror of her eye

a spark of fiery beauty

keeps us tethered from the start

to time & clay & gravity.

What we know of day

stems from the way

her lullaby enclosed Night Sea

with human shores.  So poetry,

say Anna, Nicolai,

Osip; the warm akme

glows like a sun-hearth, humanly;

so that we feel at home on earth,

where all our rights & dignity

are cherished – held inalienably

near, defended, justified – their worth

continually savored by our freedom.

This the bright consensus

won by Athens once,

& by Jerusalem – that liberty of Rome

as well, as well-water.  Oasis

of mild light & shade,

Athena-keel for well-made

coracle – pilot’s compass

              *

through confounding waves – hardy braid

Arachne spun for us

to cross Pontus Axeinos

(Lethe too, returning from the dead).

Those immense majestic figs

haunting a promontory

in Pacific Sydney

guard the Observatory – wisdom’s pegs

around a mounted, tented hologram

of Southern Cross.  Diamond

of floating light – almond

icosahedron – luminous emblem

of the 6-way star Black Elk beheld

on prairie underneath wide sky

                  *

           *           *

                  *

invisible Manitou we travel by

all night, to where bridge-rivets weld

phenomena to Thanksgiving.

Kind circuit of a whisper-

dome, thy Presence clear

& sure Love-blessings bring!

That ghost dance out of Resurrection

Cimetière – when Buried

Man became unburied

after three days in the ocean-

chest of earth – concluded with a sail

due north, to Ocean

River, where it all began;

& now, like Jonah out of mother whale

                  *

or like Carlotta out of Vertigo

a little charley-horse

tightened its muscle-force

around the oaken knee of Sampo

(read : Humanity) amid thick shade

of English oaks (Fig-

Newton Township – dig?).

An acorn Lincoln-logos made

branched into spine & ribs & mast; 

the human rights of Edward

Coke transmuted seaward

in good Williams’ boat; at last

the courageous limb bore fruit – Soul

Liberty.  Where Alighieri

drew the line, we

carry on – our freedom’s in the whole

Thanksgiving Bowl of civil rights.

You cannot chain the wind

of smiling Manitou, nor bind

Creation with your rabid fights,

O fanatic unseasoned fools!

Free mind like lightning

(your dead branches blasting)

lifts just Jonah with her Golden Rule

& adds the pearl of high Sophia

Jesus chanted, Francis

planted... holy kiss

of cosmic Union – azure everlasting Gaia.

6.2.17

Hobo's continental centrifuge

PACIFIC VOYAGE

Hobo, hunching by the great river

in winter’s clamp, peers

like an Okie Okeanos

through the ice-floes’ ripple-shivers –

through the wavy shimmer, down

through faint diffractions

where the light shines

back... a silver mirror-sun,

layering her limestone shells.

A simple madeleine

(stone crumblevine,

gray rock-dove oval) wells

from the giddy stream in limpid echoes.

Raven in Voronezh,

Cautantowwit knife-edge

grips sun in her beak – light glows

like Pearl Harbor in eclipse.

Her lunar lance shall pierce

the mule’s gray hide.  Ears

perk for Jonah’s salty lips

molded like canoe gunnel

to mime Columbia.

Her dove-insignia

frames Sophie-ship – her funnel

rays its calumet of light

above the pyramid

(violent power-grid

of barbed-wire fraud, not quite

                 *

extinguishing that Evening Star

glancing so tender yet

steadfast – a mauve fishnet

looping beneath flame’s Icarus-car).

Hobo is Jonah now, in Ocean River.

The voice beneath the sea

is like a Kievan harmony –

perpetual melody of live-forever;

her flute-throat flickering dusky rings

like rain-drenched iris

round the throne of Isis –

Hagia Sophia in a peacock’s wings.

The river chimes in Hobo’s ears

of many waters, laughing,

crying.  Wingèd seraph,

sister-sibyl, swirl his tears

& yours into the continental

centrifuge (in Center,

North Dakota).  There

the massive gravity of all

Columbia hums into monarch flight –

a raven-transmutation

of infernal nation

to green cedar habitation (night

Pacific voyage of your soul).

Hobo watched the fluttering

lift-off, slowly muttering –

milkweed seed, sail; Ocean, roll.

1.26.17

with malice toward none, with charity for all

BIRCH-BEE

                  i.m. MLK

We walk together on a zigzag path

tracing the death of kings

miming crow’s wings

of trickster history – wrath

bursting yellow-orange (balloon

for Apollinaire,

strange signal-flare

scripted for carrier pigeon)

like scars of Mars across an unknown

martyr-soldat (Eeyore-

Verman, smoked as of yore

in mustard-bowl of Bosch-demon)...

Glassed like a pair of broken bifocals

the earth’s blind O

& heaven’s diving zero

mesh in the crosshairs (personals

coulombe).  Shepherd’s last calendar

(yours, mine, ours).

Beyond blank stares

of slate, in Arctic Cimetière –

beneath Jonah’s anchor, tattooed

by Minotaur... one homing

turtledove draws OMO

in red chalk.  Graphite étude

of pensive Milky Way... orant

abysmal honey-beard’s

raven-rose word

lifting light birch-bee ark (aslant).

1.15.17

light along the river

ALMOND FAN

Morning light along the river,

where naked cottonwoods

lean toward the sun.  Ides

of November.  Hobo will shiver.

Still the grand yellow-green crown

of the willow sways in the wind.

The golden fans pinned

to the gray sidewalk (Egyptian

gingko sails) are royal palms

& roses strewn before

the laird of Jonah-lore –

coaxing his leathery alms-

mule into Jerusalem.

The weather is a kind

of global newsstand;

clouds mass like seraphim

to hear the briny sailor’s pipe

screel far & high at last

its elemental blast –

solo trompette marine, for ripe

world-winnowing crabapple-fall.

Thanksgiving’s on its way.

Manxman’s great Day

(Pink-Orange International

pi-squared to double you)

is hallowed with a lantern

glinting in the quern

of every hamlet’s plummet blue

                *

eye of ocean-grey curlew –

Atlantic ouragan,

Pacific clockhand

spinning from the deep toward you.

An octopus?  An octagon.

A Chinese lantern, great

icosahedron.  Agate

lamp of Psyche-Libération –

who lifts from indigo Rhode-harbor

morning threads, to Porta

Aurea – jasper Jenny

with a sprig from Davy Jonah’s arbor

(locket of bright copper hair).

The deep drone is no longer

doom.  Heart grows stronger

in the stars’ high midnight lair.

The child who moseyed to the shore

of Memphis Nile is borne

upon an Isis-horn

along the Milky Way, & more –

the red-white-blue American

turns black-orange-green

& back again (foreseen

by Queequeg on a slick oilcan)

& we will celebrate a Turkey Day

like peacocks in bald eagle’s

nest – Hagia Sophia’s

almond fan, one tout-monde roundelay.

11.16.16

shadow of a shadow

SILVER THREAD

A raven stitches broken arcs

over Lebanon cedars,

through layers of cinders

on sands of Galilee.  These marks

print tracks, embed the shadow

of a shadow (of

a shadow).  Whose love

cooled into bottled borders, crow-

foot scars?  Etched into sealed eyelids

the guardians of sleep

administer fear, & reap

nightmare (endless cycle in the Cyclades).

I have no wrath, hums the writhing

wheel of flame – my smile

will melt stalactite guile

until their funny bones come lurching

from the humus... rows of soldiers

thrown from stone, their hearts

wrung into speaking parts.

Her modulation wove its sutures

out of the basalt lid of night.  The ocean

gathers all its woe into

moist glance of pain... you

hear her sigh.  Love’s Jonah-sign

one silver thread – gray clouds,

gray sea, gray gull, gray

dove... & every way

her wing turns (lifting raven-moods).

7.14.16

Palimpsest of legends

GRAY THREAD

Out of gray matter of clouds & sea,

matter of Bran or of Bretagne,

slow combers of the brain

surface a fresh conception... see

your own shadow cast by sun

on flesh-tone limestone –

hear the whispering drone

in wave-beats from an unseen iron

spring.  Echoing, the king must die...

as the palimpsest of legends

from which everything depends

layers the storm with its pearl panoply

in coats of gray... & the first murmur

of the galaxies is almost

silence... & the gray ghost

of Jonah wheels one palm-feather

through the circumference of Time...

& a slight gray thread

drawn from Ocean riverbed

dangles in a cat’s-cradle (a smiling

rhyme) – emblem of unbreakable

immortal grasp of Love...

as one sea-breached dove

wings its immaculate cable

from far-flung farfalla world

to world (your only monarch).

O cedar-scented arc!

Almond diamonde – O salty pearl!

5.14.16 

We seek a sign

ISLAND SOUL

I remember that tropic hummingbird

levitating in the garden

in Roger’s Providence –

over crimson bee-balm, sailing leeward

toward St. John’s (St. Elmo’s?) fire.

New World already old

when Williams left the fold

for New-Found Land – an Aztec empire,

blood-soaked under sparkling banners

– Huitzilopochtli.  Sign

of bestial regression

(eaten by bad table manners).

We seek a sign, & lift it on a pole –

bow down, force others down

before fresh idols of frustration.

Teeth gnash, flesh burns, heads roll...

But it shall not be so with you,

spake Dov the Nazarene.

One sign alone is given –

that lad Jonah, in his whale-canoe.

I recall the scene (Deserto Rosso).

Old guy, utterly grey,

cornered by jumbled array

of gray paint cans (cooped-up, coo-coo)...

We are all Seekers now, Roger.

Pacific island soul,

deep Ocean swell...

gray-green still humming (shepherd-seer).

2.5.16

Compass of Roger Williams (courtesy RI Historical Society)