11 million light-years from Rhode Island

MORNING DEW

They’ve found another habitable planet

just in time for Thanksgiving –

around Ross 128, winking

only 11 million light-

years from Rhode Island (quiet

little red dwarf, dreaming

on its milky way).  Wing

me back to Pilgrim days... what

legend for a habitable continent

will do, now that we seem

to have gone off the beam

as human beings?  Erect a tent

for native & for refugee?

Bring in the gratitude

we understand is owed?

Who will say grace for grace?  Who, me?

The source of wonder is a mystery.

Great Rio del Espiritu

begins as wellspring too –

the stream itself is but a simile

for that invisible soul-smile

we sense, walking along

(like an unearthly song

or ghost of melody).  That aisle

of poplars on a shoreline trail...

the morris dance we trod

beneath your dome of gold

sunlight, O angel of Emanu-El...

                  *

– as when Natasha’s limping stride

befriended one forlorn

poet.  Teacher, librarian...

Philology’s sweet sister-bride...

a soul-companion, by your side.

Flowers are immortal,

& tomorrow... is for all –

Love’s welling fountain will abide.

Autumn is in the air.  Ides

of November, by the iron

Eads Bridge.  Low sun,

harsh crows.  Temperature slides.

That legend of Thanksgiving Day

(tables for everyone,

Pilgrim & Indian)

echoes via dream-song roundelay –

Henry, Hobo – Hart, John Berryman –

Dante, at Ravenn –

Black Elk, Martin...

reeling in Psyche-Restoration;

bright Rhodos-Imogen of Liberty

harbored in moss-green

robes of copper sheen;

the rippling well of Lincoln penny

radiating hopeful trust (humility).

An arc out of river water

sparkles like dancing laughter –

morning dew splashing basilica (for free).

11.16.17

musing on time passing

OPEN SEA

Hobo lingers in his old hideout,

musing on Time passing

inexorable, unceasing.

Even that Son of Man, no doubt,

is subject to the steady stream.

That He rose from the dead

after the carmine dogwood

petals bled... is like a dream –

when broken Magdalen beheld

Him, held Him tight

as she lay, hid by night

stone still, in sleep – felled

by the noon nightmare upon the hill.

It is a mystery

too deep for Hobo, or for me.

Jesus submitted to the Father’s will –

not on Golgotha, but with every beat

of that red pulsing wheel

of Ocean River (waxy seal

for human honeycomb – complete

sweet sign of infinite benevolence).

My yellowing maroon

& off-white leaf-pontoon...

my Hobo raft snaking past violence,

my dogwood octagon, shaved off

by Time into a simple

convex fish-vessel...

my melting hexagon, snow-staff

                *

of almond blooms, shading a well

in Palestine... stone skiff

leaping Gennesaret – if

only all these metaphors knot in one spell!

The spiral of a fingerprint

in limestone sea-cave

might unfurl a concave

hour-glass – etch kind intent

in pregnant sheets aslant the wind.

Each step taken, each

wave-slap on the beach

will glance to faceted perfection – find

ripe summa in a planetary plan;

the ants have theirs, Hobo

his role to play – go

find her, who unveils the sun of Man!

Magnanimous dome (Emanu-el’s)

on Morris Avenue,

your turtleshell (blue

arc of sky over her Book of Kells)

circumferences a shady tree

of leafy ladders (Jacob’s,

Jonah’s... Honest Abe’s).

We climb together, you & me,

through thunderclouds of poetry –

counting the heartbeats

as we rise... fleets

thread the Gate, to open sea.

7.10.17

Dreamsong heads downstream

FRAIL SKY

The sheep in the mosaic, in Ravenna.

Ravens in the scroll,

in the temple (Emanu-el,

off Morris Ave).  & in Siena,

Lady Pax, lolling like Jenna

on the couch, beside

Justitia.  Wide

open, now, your Burchfield scena –

wind, grassland, heartache.

What brung them blues, O shy

bird bro?  Frail sky

disintegrates in Birdy’s eye, beak

cradling bright penguin soot of Man.

Handing his crozier

gently to its heir

a sheepish Father Also-Ran

smiles, mild as any lambkin

Pontifox.  Herder-

gypsies circle ferder

into desert places.  Julius Putin

frescoes chimp dominion, over

stalag mites hiked to hell –

old human story (well,

there goes the antelope).  Clover

for meadows, cottonwood for bison...

Amaranth? – or pick

your poison, Hobo Dick.

I’m rippling a dreamsonge Union.

2.29.16

Rose pendentive

ALMOND EYE

The half-moon curve of the golden dome

of Temple Emanu-El,

so calm on Morris Avenue

in Providence.  Only an emblem

of transparent well-being – invisible ties

that loop us in a web

of lovingkindness... (hub

of the universe – clear Paradise).

You know – it knots your heart, whoever

you are.  Like the bursting-forth

of a smiling cloud, one 4th

of July, or 19th of September –

like that lunar opalescent gleam

toward autumn equinox,

when they shepherd flocks

of lambkins, & piles of pumpkins beam

like orange suns toward Thanksgiving.

Then you will remember

the anchor in the harbor

under the safety net – the sea-bells’ ding

for one lost sailor.  Radius of sound,

a palm leaf of repose;

her memory a rose

pendentive (over Indian mound) –

Ferrara iron, sounding to the depths

of pain & memory.

I am your soul, Henry;

that almond eye Pacific keeps.

9.19.15

the honeycomb dome around the corner (Morris Ave.) 

I finish the architecture poem about the synagogue. I open the paper (Providence Journal), and there's a big photo of a cantor & a choir, singing, under a dome. It's the Temple Emanu-El Choral Club, doing a benefit for South Prov. Neighborhood Ministries. Headline : "With One Voice".

The thing is, does anybody know how to read this kind of poem? I don't care. I actually know how good it is.

This building is up the street (Morris Ave.) from the site of the poem posted yesterday.

TEMPLE EMANU-EL


 
Unlike the capitol’s bold marble, rivaling Rome,
your simple curve (amid rooftop vernacular)
peeks from the hillside; through tender air
morning sunlight sketches in your dome.

 
A line is only a figure for perfection;
Immeasurability need call nowhere home;
yet light crowns your six-sided honeycomb
as if to meld the bleakest contradiction.

 
Labor dresses, lightly, weighty stone.
Liberty’s the child of constant care.
This gold almond (hovering hive-sphere,
so modest) evens odds to unison.

 
The burden of the Law goes singing, here;
mankind, infinitude, through droning time
fused in heart’s foundation, frame a rhyme:
scenting ascents (attunement) everywhere.

I think the remarks in previous blog post (on Mandelstam's Redemption/free-play symbiosis) run parallel to some of WH Auden's discoursing. Also, I think the following excerpt from a poem titled "One Evening (Early Spring)" (which appeared in the Jacket interview) illustrates some of Paul Lake's comments on fractal-recursive order in poetry:

         7

  
         Around the synagogue in the evening light
 the houses cluster in their modest drab integrity.
 Walking through their vocations (under blight
 of a voracious contracting whirlpool city)
 the humble continue. . . gathering on holiday
 outside the bronze double doors of their temples.
 The writer (an unnoticed bystander) crumples
 a scrap of crosshatched paper and throws it away.

  
         And the wind lifts a corner of the scribbled page,
 not yet finished with the end of the universe.
 Over the brilliant dome a small cloud of rage
 disguises the sun – cries:  I will immerse
 in tears – I will burn with fire – I will erase. . .
 (– pretending once more deep within heaven
 not only to destroy all creation and then
 again rebuild the whole cracked edifice

  
         but to do all this in the manner of a scribe
 with one hand at his aching brow and one eye
 peering at a mossbound, moldy parchment –)
 and Lord, we have deserved your diatribe.
 The parched earth groans for a comet's finality.
 Your mortified heart stretches through space and
 swelling spreads (ubiquitous) the fiery ointment
 of your love, of your forgiveness, of your peace.


      
                                                3.26.97