ice-breaking spring

SMOOTH FAN

This simple cup of Red Wing clay –

I thought it might be cracked.

A thick dark zigzag tracked

the rim.  Some dragon gone astray?

Quickening lightning, heavy thunder…

power of ice-breaking spring.

The bursting-forth of everything

in moss-green gold & violet splendor.

Or something darker, circuiting its wheel.

Cold-blooded Serpent, shattering

Anansi’s web (her glittering

fishnet, awash with dew)… to steal,

to kill.  Ouroboros-pelt of power

peeled from its fountain (O

omnipresent sweet communion

threaded like planetary Venus-flower).

The poet’s voice lurks with the refugees.

Exiled flint mirror, casting back

the shadow of one seamless lack

of liberty, justice – life’s guarantees.

It is a tool, a sharpened raven-knife

polished in Voronezh.

That river-town, at edge

of steppe.  O Evening Star, O sister-wife…

The river sways its coppery smooth fan

from forest spring to Okeanos.  One

willowy limb of oaken

mast… grounding the flash where it began.

4.29.20

that hexed hexagon

PRICKLY ROOFTOP

Only a light whisper of April snow

feathers the riverbank today.

The wind-serpent will flay

with rippling wings its own mud-brown

flow.  The cottonwoods lean overhead

like ribs on a canoe.  Gray veins

of some cast-off snakeskin.

Glass fane of Great Worm (empty, shed).

Where are the springs of yesteryear?

This April curls from cold

& back to cold.  From cold

to cold – inhuman, viral (some Shakespeare

Villon).  So the chill indifference

of animal aggression marks

its seal on each snowflake.

Each one unlike (unique monstrance).

So who invented this immaculate snow?

A mind of winter?  Or

a dreaming Melchior – his

clouds on high, his Bethlehem below?

We sleep, we wake… like soft snowflakes.

We drift, we float… we land

& melt upon a child’s hand.

The soul is like that dark green pine, makes

rough & prickly rooftop – root foundation

for each spindrift, wayfaring

Romany light-traveling

human earth-heart time-migration

*

– so hear the art then, O spiraling 

hearth!  Martian enfoldment

like arms of Odin, bent

around himself – whole tree corralling!

For Snowflake is that hexèd hexagon

of heaven & earth, joined

in your heart, coined

Abraham – red copper of the gun;

that regal object-dart of adoration

– tangled boomerang, returned

upon itself – urned

at the apex of our celebration;

the bread & wine of every sacrifice

offered by universal Everyman

each time she lifts the can

for mite or gold doubloon… our price.

The light snow sweeps across Ireland

& Minneapolis-St. Paul.

A sweet lamb looks from wall

of van Eyck emerald, almost human (sand

or salt will reveal her, underneath

Mississippi varnish).  Flowers

are eternal, soul-power

is substantial… MELEK shall bequeath

his welcome-gift of bread & wine

on his way to Memphis

for the garbage men.  This

my body… this my blood.  Lamp, shine.

4.3.20

where the spring is found

ROBIN HUM

This plaintive spring, like a lonesome robin

piping his distance at the riverbank.

Out of The Tender Land, I think.

The vast bronze river is one serpentine

vibration.  A continental vernal sign,

stretching with catenary smiles

from Lake Itasca to the marshy isles

off New Orleans.  & Hobo sez – all mine.

Dotted with gravity of local bridges,

1132 miles (up & down).

Their almond arcs a pontoon

cascade… cavernous vector of ledges…

climbing toward a flimsiest first whorl

of fiddlehead crowns

at the source of sounds –

where the spring is found.  All shall be well

& all manner of thing shall be well

when the blazing rose shall dwell

at the matrix of clay wheel,

& Thunderbird boom his bronze bell.

& the cry of the mighty bird & the sigh

of the river sound one octave :

unison, played in the key of Love.

For though I sing like angels & men… & though I

have all knowledge – all prophetic wisdom

of stars & planets, capitals

& kings – yet I have not caritas…

I am but sounding brass.  Hear Robin hum.

3.19.20

print on linen by Grace Tagliabue & Phoebe Gould

eyes of March

CHASTE EYE

I took a little walk today

slipping over the ice.

The earth veiled in sadness

by violence & bigotry –

Christchurch & the world in mourning.

A bird-of-paradise

merging with Maui skies

ricochets low planetary droning.

The Ides of March.  Caesar must die

to instaurate the Empire,

bleeding for the crowd on fire.

Republican conspirators have gone awry.

The throne requires a figurehead.

The bronze serpent is nailed

on Golgotha – is hailed

Messiah, INRI.  The king is dead.

This frozen hollow by the brown river

is full of streaming sound.

Little rivulets, underground

where Berryman left town forever.

An old man’s presentiment of spring

is like a lost heartbeat...

& somewhere nearby, a sweet

selfless affection tunes her string.

We must delve deeper into this

my friend, my limping muse.

Natasha’s temple (Voronezh)

sings with a chaste eye (goldfinch kiss).

3.15.19

round which we merry go

LIGHT GLANCES

Now, at dusk, the early lilacs

breathe out their scent.

Tired crabapple’s bent

limbs burst into a climax-

galaxy of blossoms, pink & white –

rhyming those slight cloud-

petals overhead

like Botticelli’s passionate

notations for the Paradiso

(Beatrice’s dancing

flame-spirits, candescing

in a last heaven-crescendo).

Old splendor of May-month springs

anew.  None shall judge her.

Like Osip’s meteor

flung suddenly through Saturn’s rings

Ophelia steps from a weedy break

wearing Ariadne’s crown –

grace, honor & renown

clothe her again, out of elm-book

of Primavera-life – primordial

Persephone, sharing

one diamond ring

(soul’s Solomonic seal, octagonal).

The river’s profile of limestone

reflects its lambent flow.

Each wave curls now

light glances toward one flint Person

                    *

the intellect sees through the show

of leafy cottonwood sheen

(black limbs lean toward one

point round which we merry go).

It’s personal, in a fleeting, refugee

sense, mumbles Hobo.

The stone beyond Cosmo.

The source of lightning & oak tree –

where little Henry hid one day

like Bonnie Charlie in a bole

of mossy acorn-meal.

The soul is preternatural, he say.

Soul is King, & Queen.  Mary

floresces rose, in bloom

beneath almond moon...

Hamlet, Ophelia marry.

Adamantine chair of motherlode...

gravitational pull

of con vexed out of Hell.

Adam’s evening (nails in road).

Looming in the linen of the dream,

the dawn fleece of time...

the scapegoat’s crime,

the victim’s cornerstone (walled

without seam into apex of dome).

This your chink of light

through the long jail night.

Your Camelot (milk-train kingdom).

5.5.17

green buds are just -

TROMPETTE MARINE

Giuliana opens a ceramic shop

on Ravenna back street.

The “Old Man of Concrete”

surrounded by gray pots of slop

paints himself into a nearby corner;

Giuliana’s little boy

paralyzed (Guillain-Barré?)

plays with his yellow gyroscope.  Her

lover mopes, lost... (ambivalent

professional).  Red Desert,

Deserto Rosso.  Hurt

blooms in the sea-salt spring (Lent...

Easter).  Lofty kind eyes in shadowed

stone (Pantocrator, &

Theotokos) still stare down

from hollow warehouses (A.D. 600).

Green buds are just emerging here,

Psyche, Persephone

in center of the country

(Center, N.D.).  Land mass, a sphere

from sea to sea (theoretically) –

a glop of potter’s clay

in solar roundelay;

Palm Sunday to Good Friday (bloody

travesty, Ford Theatre).  Then

the turtle at the finish line

emerges from the brine

reborn – Rabbit in acute cartoon

(Metamorphosis at Minnaheehee

Falls).  Dante, Beatrice

step through the sun (hey

ey yo) astride Dakota prairie

hoisted on stray lambswool thread

like Vallejo’s poncho

(wheat-gold Paris gaucho-

robe)   or galactic Temple shroud

woven from smoke of calumet

& Camels   (veteran

Guillaume   a crimson crown

swathed round his beaming pate)

so Theseus & Ariadne   circle-dance

the gold pavement   grey Chartres

                   *

matrix   womb of silence

&   clear light   joy of the makers

On an upward path, the labyrinth

becomes a spiral, &

the Minotaur’s command

the envy of a shadow (absinthe

green).  Your quipu-knot records

an anchor weight – the rings

of one stone, tempering

the river-sweeps... only soft words

like flute-sounds, scattered seeds.

Stricken Giuliana,

limping hopeful Natasha –

Nadezhda, too – resilient reeds

walk in solemn palm procession

round the sea-wall

& the sparse green hill;

the bald truth of clay   passion

& its aftermath   high keening

sea-bell   through   seraphic blue

the ultramarine   (Pacific

hue).  Jonah   always coming, going

always being born   out of the waves

of infinite agape

lifts old sails   away

for Columbia   & Liberty   she waves

the light torch   over homely harbors

mangers of refugees

fleeing plaited Caesars

(their cracked saucer seizures)

as the integral of   furnace fiddleheads

the deep-sprung source

of Everyland   smokes Morse

code goodness   penetrating sadness

like undying Hope   into the arms

of Osip   or Goldie the Finch

your friend   in the clinch

of Hart’s woe   John’s alarms

the desolation of a lonely child

a hearth-star   shines for her

the safety net   saves her

Love blazes from the center   wild

onlie-Begetter   mild   trompette marine

4.13.17

the law is not a sword

WILD GRAPES

A timid April tiptoes toward

her Spring.  Gun-gray sky,

leaf-brown river.  Hobo’s eye

moseys from earth to heaven (&

backward, again).  Raven loops

his knotty diagram,

figures 8 a.m.

some eats (thin scraps he scoops

betwixt instinctual communal hates

of squawky flocks, nations).

Noah’s inflammations

Eli salts – warns, Don’t be late.

Fuming smoke signals just

add to his unease.

Alighieri aims to please –

his bones rest in Franciscan dust,

his narrow beak angles from spark

to spark.  Hearth-embers

flicker out drear winters of

scalding be-ice.  Imperial dark

is splintered by gold threads of light –

lamb-thin graphene ravels

the cave-mouth – mangy hovels

hearken to trompette marine (slight

return).  Apollinaire or Orpheus,

shepherds in New Orleans,

Ravenna... rustic scenes.

Under an overpass (U.S.

               *

or Rus) refugees convene,

lean farmers share

their plows... while everywhere

stones ricochet like bayonets (mean

answers mean, unkind unkind).

The law is not a sword;

it is a binding word

uniting variable humankind

proceeds from love, & so returns –

one warm traveling lamp

from isolated camp to camp

where Roger & Canonicus trade yarns

& Edward Elk defends each Everyone

upon egalitarian

thread-frame (one golden

safety net for all the wobbly children

of sweet Manitou).  Cautantowwit

whispers a Narragansett

name over each hamlet-

nest in Providence.  Let’s eat.

The gathering of crumbs, wild grapes

& hobos has begun.

Mississippi sun

beams west, southwest... Pacific shapes

crest arcs of rainbow (orange, indigo,

azure & rose)... an Ocean

State anchors her span –

Hope’s incarnation (Jonah show).

4.10.17

Womb in the cave-shade

ALMOND ARK

They were farmers & shepherds in West Branch,

cartwrights & blacksmiths, laboring

through pain... the rusty ring

of iron clamps, the thick stench

of horse manure, the pigs & cows...

yet took their time for quiet

in the Meeting House – let

runaways abide, lambs browse.

Their silence lodged in protest against

violence itself –

the insolence of Guelf

& Ghibelline, the gangs, the hunts...

the iron dream of domination

locking the brain-cave

in its frozen grave

(creak-echo of damnation).

There was a spring in Tuscan hills,

coiled like a rusty serpent –

green with moss, bent

into turtleshell... old Williams’

spiral (out of Coke, Blackstone).

Mules’ rustic rights

& supernatural delights

limp into leaves of a live-oak woman –

her heavy womb in the cave-shade

like a Negus by the Nile

hidden for a while...

almond ark of spring (oak-apple maid).

5.11.16

Quaker Meeting House, Scattergood School, West Branch, Iowa

In the vein of Atlantis

SUNSET GATE

Spring, a project of the Earth.

While she waits for Homo Sapiens

to get over his aggressions –

revert to innocence (a Maypole mirth).

In the beginning... all the begins

of the Beguines... the big

innings.  Whirligig

of river-prairie syncopations...

I went down into the Bottomland,

down to Monk’s Mound.

A Mississippi sound,

a tuning fork of lightning (&

thunder).  I looked into my hand

& felt a gentle eye

look back (speaks Ioway).

Fishnet... veil of mystery... grand

Isis-Life.  Her cryptic tripod

out of Flanders fields

(a Jenna-quivering) yields

Triple-Flem – from Seeker linchpad

over Providence, through keystone

arc, westward... stray

crois (her sunset Gate) –

one orange firetread in the ozone,

warped on muddy waters (surging

to Lousanna).  So

the shield of Buffalo-

Mandan feathers her circlet (corralling).

5.10.16

from Monk's Mound (Cahokia, Illinois)

Statue of Isis (West Branch, Iowa)

National Poetry Month begins with April Fools

SPRINGLIGHT

                                       i.m. Jim Harrison

April by the ancient river.

The old bones of the king

remember everything

that he forgot – his yellowed quiver

like a scrollful of desire, old goat,

old Harry son of Harry,

with his dogs, with his ’44,

a massif in a cave, disconsolate –

world like a bungled maze, a hive

of killer bees, in a hole

in the ground.  Old King Cole

with his pipe & his bowl, still alive

somehow.  A dust-mote labyrinth

horned by his own shade.

I met a straw-blonde maid

of Provençal, spruce terebinth

from Marseille, or Toulouse – name’s

Quitterie – who kissed

me sweetly, once

outside St. Martin-in-the-Fields...

                     *

Turn again, O Man, from thy insect

wickedness... a dust-storm

swarms the bristlecone

pine, high in her cold dry cleft,

still evergreen.  Through yon spiderweb

of desperate cities

one clear flute-breeze

intones a major melody (B-

flat) – frail threads transmogrified

like griffin-chords into

transparent unison – blue

octave through twin pillars (pied,

squared).  It was an iteration

out of alienation, empty

heart of vanity –

whose nothingness nested creation.

                     *

Long ago el Rio del Espiritu Santo

rolled, a mighty glacier-

torrent, out of here –

before your dream-songe Manitou

brought you to tent among these timbers,

People.  April was Earth

before a human birth

lent gentleness & poison (hers,

yours, mine).  I found a moss-green coin

locked in a cedar fork,

swept past the flooded park

into this punted limb.  Begin the Beguine,

spun the vapid strings... the War to End

All Wars is ended.  An old

king crawls from the blistered

bole (emptied orphanman, around

the bend) – shines in the springlight

like a babe newborn.

Roland honks his horn;

Guillaume unwraps his gauze (a Calumet).

4.1.16

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

BOAT-MAID

Primeval spring, at the center of the forest

at the source of headwaters

where mothers find daughters

& fathers, sons... your robin’s nest

I sleepwalk toward, beneath half-notes

of chickadee, shrill keening

wail of cardinal, seeking

Persephone (between ice-flotes).

Psyche, Ophelia, Juliet...

your muttered hobo-names

for fishing lures.  These games

of avocation... drowsing yet

below Cahokia, the Kore fields

of poppies (Orleansville

or Alexandria)... Île-

de-France... Ariadne’s golden wheels...

Old Guillaume with his mummy-crown

smokes goldenrod & wine

beside the snoring Rhine.

Hobo might catch a Jonah-fish, or one

might swallow him (it’s all the same)

pining beside the brook

of Lethe... – say there, look

anew, McDuff!  Her ancient name

is Cora – she’s a round boat-maid

of cedar (juniper);

her berries are pure

blue, honey – she’s evergreen (almond).

2.26.16