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

through Narragansett smokehole

AGATE LAMP

A peaceful evening in late April

the trees barely budding

in mild light   while brooding

darkness rings   the besieged people

& this dissonance of visible   invisible

an indivisible fire   smoldering

criminals & saints   revealing

callous inhumanity    with humble

solidarity   courageous   all-compassionate

& in my flimsy gazebo

octagonal coracle or   Argo

with Sophie’s wind-chime   over the gate

delicate oak-leaf butter-knife design

tingling in the calm air   O

here in my Ariadne-lair   where

a Chartres J coils  toward her Eschaton

& my whisper follows Cautantowwit

through Narragansett smokehole 

southwest, southwest   while a soul-

hart sails back   to her monarch nest –

that circling square dance of Ocean beams

where the spirit of Jessie Ophelia

& Juliet Ravlin   abide in Thee   &

Eternity, O Eternity! cries Roger Williams

& you lift your agate lamp, Psyche

like a fiddlehead   in Holy-Land

& the soeur-coulombe of the Son

of Man   swerves   with a shining eye

4.27.20

on Holy Saturday

RIVER-TOY

On Holy Saturday, the Great Sabbath

when Jesus murmured, It is finished

& in his grave (like Jonah’s fish)

rested… as in an Ocean River bath…

When 12-yr-old Henry grandly admired

his glue-stiff model (Old Ironsides)

alight with joy, & tired pride…

– as just now Sophie dashed across the yard

to him, 50 years later – to display

the paper flower boat (sky-

blue, & Clizia-giallo) she

runs off to let fly, down the Mississippi…

her tender river-toy… her revery, her rest.

& while Henry gyred – wacky

as Coney Island in Waconia –

like Hermann Gödel, in his final nest

of parenthetical limit (righteous exactitude

of unknowing) – across the path

from Sarah’s parents (math

of relativity – some spousal quark beatitude)…

Where the world ends, & begins again;

at Swan Point, where her mother lies

who died the day his father’s eyes

first opened.  Amid the Great Congregation

of synagogue & church (pain-bearing world)

one pearl-eye opens at the prow

of raven-beak Argo.  Mark thou

how contrapuntal matrices of love enfold.

4.11.20

at the close of a year

JOVIAL STAR

The weathered flesh-tones of the Franklin Bridge

her twin brows arched with wonder

in the imperturbable splendor

of the winter sun.  You give me courage.

Not the one or the other, only

but the concord of the two

in three.  What ravels you

& me – kindling of Dove, or Bee.

Sophie brought me a handful of shells

& an acorn, from Rhode Island.

A child’s gift, out of sand –

at the year’s end, from sea-swells.

& it came to me, at the close of a year

that Earth itself is the ball of clay.

Your mother’s wheel, for a day

& a night... Time unfolding, free & clear.

That fortitude of Roger, in his Providence

was planted by one adamant law –

the human well of love & awe,

the infinite heart, your recompense.

The jovial star beams on its balance-point.

The sense of rightness Osip felt

comes like your sister-dove; eyes melt

frost with twin rays of hearth-fire.  Scent

of your presence, walking beside me, Hobo

intuits, hearkens, turns –

out of these graven Grecian urns

quick water voices, chorusing.  Lamps, glow.

12.31.19

only piano in town

CLAY BARN

6-yr-old Sophie curls up in the lap

of grumpy old Grandpa

to listen to Grandma 

read us the story of Jingle Bells.  Slap-

happy Mr. Pierpont, of Medford Mass.

watching 12 skating sliders

skim frozen circles (laughter’s

elves) runs next door to Mrs. Waterman’s

– only piano in town, to test his melody

& the rest is history

she’s ready for bed, isn’t she

Sophie’s growing up fast, Henry

The tall Norway pine at the prow

of the duplex, like a mast

climbing up toward one vast

frosty galaxy, with its Xmas lights in tow

(Grandpa’s dad’s project once, long ago)

they don’t glow anymore

but the duplex lies at anchor

like every ark, Egyptian barge, Ferrara canoe

like every nave, like every churnagogue,

like every Celtic coracle –

round as a 4-leaf miracle

of Columba, or Mayflower Compact (ship’s log

of covenanted sheep’s union);

round as lightswept dome

of Hagia Sophia, or home

sweet home (clay barn, Mississippian)

12.16.19

small icon, a gift of Elena Shvarts, poet of St. Petersburg

now we are six

SOUL LIBERTY

Today be the birthday of granddaughter Sophie

the Bangladeshi-American.

Her Baba became a citizen

in 2017.  They’re just as American as you & me.

We made a covenant of equality

before God, long ago.

African-Americans know

how long it took to become just barely free,

not to say equal before the law

in this blood-soaked country.

It begins with soul liberty –

thumbprint of human dignity.  We saw

how Roger stood alone against the weight

of Boston magistrates,

to separate a faith’s dictates

from common civil rights – & shape a state

of openness, of global mutuality

– planted in equity,

grounded equality –

premonition of a new reality

emerging like a dream rose island

from an imagined Providence

(Roger’s capacious sense

of Edward Coke’s law-learned hand).

Sophie, dancing image of an unseen grace,

child of the universe

sprung up in Minneapolis,

take hold of your inheritance – one hopeful place.

8.21.19

plastic leaves & bottlecaps

SALTY DEW

This autumn wind-chime Sophie made

like El Anatsui (African

weaver spider-man)

from plastic leaves & bottlecaps, tied

with bright ribbons – a key, a table knife,

a silver keychain ring,

a crystal ball... everything

needful for the voyage into afterlife

(October & November, winter

ice).  I hear it now,

an echo from the prow

of gray stone mothership.  Your

Notre Dame of infinite mercy,

villain François.  Or Chartres,

Hen – where light chartreuse

rhymes with sky-blues, calm sea

of sunset rose.  On the scarred floor

a labyrinthine feedback

loop speeds Argo-carrack

by umbilical thesis to Ari’s door.

Arachne, Ariadne...in Rhode Island?

One subterranean Ocean

Stream, Atlantean

where every son of J sails home again

across Medea’s Méditerranée – &

where Medusa’s stone frown

melts, to gleaming crown

of salty dew... grail of compassion.

9.11.18

most August wind-chime

MIGRANT TABERNACLE

So another August 8th-month

inches toward its close.

Whatever Pilate says,

goes – IN RI, nailed to a terebinth.

Whatever happens, happens, now.

An old man is an oak leaf

skimming like a thief,

going to ground.  & when the winds blow

the silver pipes of Sophie’s chime

go tingle-tangle... melody

of sea-blue cherub, see?

Clasping Columbia, his sweet tame

turtledove.  While her fire-engine chair

waits in my octagon

beneath late-summer sun –

a migrant tabernacle... Amor-

Shalom... transportable to Paradise.

Her father is a recent

immigrant, & citizen.

The Shekinah is mercy for chaste eyes –

unquenchable fountain of pure love

for simple existence, for

its mysterious source.  Our

wisdom, Sophie – like your turtledove –

comes shimmering down... she permeates

all things, & everywhere.

As it was always, my dear –

the mind of Love revives, creates.

8.31.18