Cordelia in the wasps' nest

AUTUMN RITE

In the car coming back from the memory unit

I catch the tail end of Mahler’s 9th

the slow slow strings’ fading strength

bent like snarly willow limbs into some resonant

sweet culmination (ancient Mendelssohn

elegy in mind).  Autumn’s

rust-blood golden sun’s

quintessence now, O silent one?

Cordelia in the wasps’ nest, at the axis

of the earth... Lear, trembling

like an oak gall wasp – bleeding,

stung by the crypt-keeper (Euderus

Set).  The wasp within the wasp, Osip –

Shakespeare’s quaint acorn-

crown of happiness (shorn

pharmakon).  & shalt thou drink my cup?

The box-within-a-box, the matryoshka

toy?  Like bloody JFK

in Dallas, on a Friday –

Jackie’s pink tiara (autumn leaf regalia)...

The river of violin sound measures time

to its serene delta, my friend.

& the tree (Hagia Sophia with a million

eyes) harbors the wind like a nursery dome –

you hear the sound of it (that waterfall

through twin cities, Berryman)

but you know not whence (my son)

it comes (oak’s Galla rite, imperial).

10.15.19

Rab Ravlin was a weaver bred

SILVER TRACK

Summer’s gliding toward those falls.

The sumac swords are rusted

iron.  Below the nested

locks (St. Anthony), swift sculls

are water-spiders on a dragon’s back.

Hobo Larva... Henry

Woodpecker, monarch (maybe)...

all worm, Noman?  Whose silver track,

mercurial, serpentine?  I was

the wolf in Sheep’s Clothing,

tearing Ariadne’s weaving,

trading lux for lechery (luxurious);

I was the shadow of the waxing moon

purling beneath Pearl Harbor

Day – casting her bitter

part across the bar (Frisco Lagoon).

Now crickets rattle in the looming dusk,

a chorus, waiting in its wings.

1132, the catgut sings –

our heavy grave (in one cicada husk).

Only the lightest antigravity

can spark the dark menorah

in the heart of King Henrah.

Lonely almond of sheer pity

welling forth Father of Waters...

what was Magdala stone

becoming human Union

(steely pontoon, welding 4 quarters).

9.16.19