irrational Archimedean constant

APPLE PIE

On the cusp of another Ides of March

plague wracks the Republic.

Snubbing his soothsayers, slick

Julius the 4th tees off a crumbling arch.

Henry Hollow glimpses Fenris in the mirror

coyotes laughing in the doorway

the delicate gyroscopic orrery

of light & dark about to shatter –

shards of church & state, the glare

of Lucifer the puppet-master

dark Leviathan off-shore

a wilderness of the sea (whale Jonah’s lair).

But it shall not be so with thee,

you murmur to me…

                O

irrational Archimedean constant

transcendental root of unity.

Mild logos of a fisherman, a Fisher

King, fish-man… your hook

one Magdalenian smile – her look

from nocturne-cave of milky… where?

Before the granary-empire, before

domestication of the slave –

beyond star-winking nave

or curve of Galla crypt (Ravenna lore);

the ratio of infinite circumference

to one straight line.

Guillaume’s trompette marine.

Thanksgiving apple pie (in Providence).

3.14.20

essential graphene histrionics

AUTUMN NIGHT

My biographical Brown Decades tumbled

rapidly by, in Providence.

How simply the silence

of these beseeching trees (autumn

at the Arboretum) speaks to me!

Alex Weinstein, in Mt. Auburn...

stood there with Sandy (Grecian

Urn?  Likely committed it to memory).

He played the violin at 91.

Emigré from Odessa –

fruit-fly research @ Columbia –

loved poetry & science... (thread-thin,

stooped, seraphic gentleman

of Cambridge Mass.) –

& so the fleet years pass,

callow Henry, to Thanksgiving (amen,

amen).  I put my faith in one

contextual canoe –

dry tacit Quaker taboo

against unquestioned superstition;

a sort of Boston Personalism

accepting each whorl

of conscience as the real

sign of some ineffable wisdom –

spring, source, coil, J

spiraling beneath a moon

brighter than cogitation

tonight... in a jumbled chaos of hay

                  *

stacked (by osmosis-creation)

across twistronic history

into graphene infinity.

Histrionics of pacemaker nation?

No, kid – it is the equilibrium

of a canoe or gyroscope

emanating (spilling hope)

out of the heart of the Imperium

accosting the Seizer of All Good

with adjusted reciprocity

of infinite mercy –

that normative hearth-neighborhood

established on the everlasting rock

of I & Thou, of eye

& dhou (equality

the ratio of the basic J’nah-Ark).

& so the weird Isis-receptacle

of Mirror-I-Am

fuses in twin-rhyme

with Notre Dame; so the spectacle

of male narcissism becomes unviable

at ordinary crowing

of Rhode Island Red – being,

like palm at the end of the mind, able

to hoot like Owl o’Athena

in the autumn night of

history   (the shadow of love

bending over your cradle)   Ephphatha

11.5.19

the stubborn Acmeist

AMERICAN THING

The way a stream flows around a piece of granite

rough gray in the water, winking

with rose quartz, mica (splintering).

So the stubborn Acmeist would honor that

which is, that which exists.  & Osip

would agree with Oscar Cullmann

as to the meaning of Redemption –

it’s already happened.  So right worship

is a thing of joy – ample gratitude

for being, & the hope

of Restoration (its full scope

a celebration, braiding bread & wine).  You’d

barely sense the almost-infinitely distant

echoes of a first Thanksgiving...

everyone hoisting something

to that scrawny picnic table (ancient

light).  So as we J-stroke forward

let’s return to New Orleans

with B. Latrobe, who kens

the old French buildings there (mired

in mosquito nets & drainage swamps);

where he will follow his own son

to his malarial grave (one

body, bread & wine).  Under yellow lamps

like fireflies in the harbor (swaying,

soaring).  Scintillant mosaic

for one lugubrious Republic

(hopeful, Creole).  Clay American thing.

8.6.19

call him Halfway Hank

FICTIONAL GARAGE

Hobo staggers along the riverbank

halfway between Henry

& Osiris (bury-

man).  Call him Halfway Hank.

Like Bluejay all out of mummer’s tricks

memories of a Myth America

detach from his hat (ha-ha,

caw-caw).  Tall Tale of Two-Sticks

maybe – or The Time We Had a Picnic.

Nostalgia for infinity

invokes our Plenty-

Big-Prairie; mysterieux Henri Pick

was anonymous, along with Alexander P.

These meadowlands are Russian.

Thunder’s Oblomovian this

afternoon (American iz you & me).

So memory would like to dab a fresco

containing a continent.

As when a canoe is bent

around a bough of yew, or spent willow...

in some fictional garage in Ferrara

where recent immigrants

gather for sustenance

like Jonah huddled in a whale’s cantina

& the eye in your hand opens like a tear

& the river streams into the Gulf

where Wolfram & Beowulf

celebrate Thanksgiving (more Grail? – here).

7.16.19

cloud & catalpa, Minneapolis

Cloud & Catalpa, Minneapolis (Martin Johnson Heade, 2019)

GRASS CLOVERLEAF

Everything grew simpler in that high room

overlooking Jerusalem

when he added up the sum

& gave us his Thanksgiving poem.

The apostolic laying on of hands

was just an afterthought

Mary Magdalen taught

to keep the Presence each one understands.

The knot held.  The silverweb

floresced, in centaur arrow-

shots – from Antioch to

Thebes, up to remotest Gad-Gab

(Ethiopia).  Axled on coffin

of coffins.  Buried deep

as Noah’s ark.  Sleep,

King of Kings (like everything human).

This gemstone of the Southern Cross

shines like diamond

out of emerald

almond – mossy quaternion, grass

cloverleaf (in shape of heart).

That little tree will root

where all the branches start,

where all the rivers roll (sky-girt

perpendicular – little Everytwig

leaning against current)

– unto that iron agent

sluicing the Delta to a brazen fig

                    *

shriveled, dry (as is the way with figs).

Yet Wisdom is justified

in all her children.  Hide

now, O Man – Ouragan digs

into clay.  Rotating so solemnly,

she shakes the bone-limbs

from their joints, skims

lightly over coastal property

– only to uproot, destroy.  Bideth

nor roof nor door, Tornado!

Like the Iron Age you know

twisted to shattering shadow... Lilith-

Crocodile, climbing from Delta

to muddy matrix of 

St. Louis.  Scorned Love

twisted into dust-mandala –

substantial b-flat of the galaxies

stilled, played in reverse.

The little tree of Ursus

Minor – little star, catalpa’s

iris-blooms – starts wheeling

counter-clockwise.  Clover

culminates your

integral almond-canoe.  Sing,

Muse, Oblomov-grail of prairie earth!

The great wheel turns.

Jonah’s corn-maze yearns

Restoration... (Miriam’s rebirth).

6.28.19

ancient West Branch watercolor

CURVE PRONGS

Everything gets more simple

in old age.  Trust me.

Thanksgiving pumpkin pi =

two stone pillars, plus an ample

roof.  Henry Mewl, hee-hawing

NNW (out of Apuleius)

checkmates template Isis 

planted in West Branch (settling

in river-bronze).  Like that watercolor

Mary Negus limned

in high school – skimmed

from unlocked memory (her

Grant Wood brain, a dusty library).

The curve prongs back to earth

west of St. Lou. – Ft. Worth.

Van Cliburn Plumbs to Victory.

I was walking up from the Mississippi

this afternoon, & met

(in Voronezh sunlight)

an ancient babushka, smiling at me.

Thinking of Nadezhda, & of hope...

of Mary Magdalen,

who witnessed Russian

irony in the garden (roped-

off Gesthem – Tsarskoe Selo).

The dream song blinks

until your lighthouse winks.

Wry rosy Providence (all systems go).

1.11.19

a merry caw-caw for Thanksgiving

GIVE THANKS

We give thanks for life’s poetry

which arrives (unexpected)

through gates of neglected

farmyards.  For the spare mystery

of solitary lighthouses, beaming

steady wheel-spokes

(Rhode Island folks

know what we say, dreaming

sea-woven Narragansett night).

A merry caw-caw

semaphores her law

by roof-smoke... Raven’s last rite;

like Roy Van Doublegram – cross-eyed

matryoshka doll

(owl in a well) –

Hagia Sophia’s multiocular Argo-hide

(serpentine tesserae’s bronze

glint, like Quetzalcoatl

drifting up from Mexico).

For being lifted up to heaven’s

dome, by way of Providence

(O supernatural Grace).

Who is that Falcon-Ace

on Ibis-wing, speeding to silence?

Emily, Cordelia... be

with me now.  Will

must climb volcano-hill...

Love’s Istanbul (Turkey).

11.20.18

by the long slow delta-mouth

BRIGHT FLASH

That line of poplars in the Corot distance

like on the way to Ravenna

or along the Seine, Papa

– no, only the topmost branches

of a simple sycamore in Providence

– no, just a maple

in Minneapolis.  O ample,

inexpressible, tongue-tied inheritance!

In the heart of the heart of the country

maybe.  Where anguish lives

alongside hope – conceives

the origin of time-&-space, Henry –

this wilderness of unfound, foundered

land.  This knotted maze

where a wood casket will blaze

(portable grail, marine crossroad)

the suddenly articulate harmony

of an integral universe

like that scene on a vase

when Isaac, Ishmael & Melpomene

leave town together, shaking tambourines

a procession to seashore

on the blind side of Minotaur

throwing down scimitars, carbines

for their Thanksgiving celebration

by the long slow delta-

mouth   at the seething O

& ah   bright flash   of seraph exultation

6.24.18

those double doors

DEEP RESCUE

Those double doors of the Baptistery

in Florence, where Alighieri

was restrained from returning.  He

might have admired the mastery

of Lorenzo Ghiberti – that golden river

of perfection, surging from

Eden to Gesthemani... some

inscrutable summa of Prime Mover

spoked in parables of heartbreak

& confusion (Miriam, lifting

both hands in agony).  So bring

what you have to a blindman’s break-

fast, to her Thanksgiving feast.

From the belly of a whale

came Jonah – whole & hale

as dolphin-breach (O swift grey beast)!

The linèd forehead of Leviathan

is like your own... therefore

be not dismayed.  Footsore

mule, flinty thin Prophet Stan,

your Livingstone (still at the Nile)

holds firm against the flow

of time – your steadfast glow

upon the brow of them who show.  Smile,

Indigo!  Passage to more than blue!

– these equilibria

of gyroscape... mute

mutualità, below the soil... deep rescue!

5.16.18

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

human with human, clay with clay

Bde Maka Ska, 9.1.17

GREEK GALLEY

Now as high summer light ripens

for departure, I remember

how the slight high-wire figure

teetered with tinker shuffle – he bends

his magnetic pole like a long-legged

water-spider, concentrating,

pursuing path P (humming

under his breath) – like a ragged

American robin yodeling, like Francis

the mule on his slight dogwood

perch – so Mayflower would

not sink to sea-floor, so helpless

crowds not tumble from twin towers

to be men not destroyers

his mind moves with those powers

preternatural, avian – showers

of coruscate sparks   from Night Sea

mind   of Okean-reality

heart of   gratitude-mentality

a rustic Thanksgiving   Massasoit will see

to it   along with Black Elk   &

that woodpecker   Thunderbird

a red-streak   flute-word

seeking the common factor   grain

of sand   salt   the personal touch

her hand moves   back & forth

her footsteps   north, south

with his   east, west   in a torch-

                  *

song dream   a melody of Sabbath

silence   invisible liberty

simplicity of   soul poverty

& touch of palm   Grace   have no wrath

So you enter the fiery mind-hearth

of heart-mine   the flame

that never dies   who came

from Sky-Whale   to the earth

Jonah   turtledove   blinding Phoenix

so that disconsolate disunion

of father & daughter be undone

with mother & son   a catenary

parallax   twin for twin   tower

for gate   dark green Atlantic

azure-tangerine Pacific

primavera robin   in woodpecker bower

raven & bluejay & eagle   looking on

all these old threads   a nest

or safety net (good, better, best)

for wounded souls   yearning for dawn

So take firm hold   like little Philippe

the water-spider’s   shaking   handlebar

& skip   like Juliet   there

on the sandy shore   where Okean-Ship

embarks for a feast   of reconciliation

human with human   clay

with clay   like a Greek galley

with smiling eye   aye-aye   cosmopolitan

9.11.17

O splendiferous butternut

SALT-CUBE

September butternuts bombard the ground,

soft lime-green globes a-burst

with rich black compost-

muck.  By genealogy of sound

they must descend from Milky Way

on high; from some black hole

of fiery Moloch-El

shifting the gravitational display

plummeting like an otfe-stone

out of St. Peter’s burg

to vertiginous epilogue

(Akhmatova-agate, or Pushkin-

bone).  Sealed with a raven-knife

tattoo, absinthe still-life –

l’Affaire Dove-Sister-Wife,

mired in a faro-game of civil strife.

Her smile’s invisible as air.

Now Phoenix is on fire

& flooded Lone Star Empire

waits for Milly the Kid to appear;

up here in Minneapolis, Frank Gehry’s

fishtail art museum

harbors Hartley’s muse.  Glum

Crane surfacing as white shark – hairy

situation! & out the window, there’s

Berryman’s burnt span –

marooned sad son of Man

abridged to riveted soul-tears.

                   *

Some autumn in King Lear, mayhap

(John’s doggèd copy?)

may Heav’n shed mild mercy-

milk through these blind spokes, old Pap.

It’s waiting for you, Cain, McCain –

open your magnanimity

to gratitude!  See

to the superflux...  She comes again

light-feathered through your heart –

Cordelia, Columbia;

unscrolls the epigraphia

footnote on warped LP (dappled 8-part

harmony) – spectrum of a weedy

Jonah-flag.  Within gray

scales, smoke-signals (hey

ey yo) her hand waves complimentary

colors – black earth, jungle green

& orange flaring yellow-

gold (passage to indigo);

red, white & cinder (ultramarine)

complete the ashen diamond

salt-cube of Manitou

(that Hiawatha 1-3-2) –

whose handspin sets a table ronde

for Pilgrim as for Wampanoag

& etches mene mene tekel

onto Minotaur’s tough Jekyll-

hide (only a promise, Nadia-Mag).

9.7.17

vive la France

CALM RONDURE

This rustic humble tablecloth

from Vienne street fair

(crowding her amphitheatre

hewn by Rome) poses a math

problem : how can I square this

table ronde within

the weathered octagon

of an American gazebo?  Ms.

Emily might know, or maybe Marianne...

some mounded clay pitcher

of accurate grace.  Her

toss across a potter’s wheel (nine

innings for a feline Muse)

spins stars like comets

through snarled sailor knots –

Mary & Rachel, bearing news

of natural law so blazing sharp

as to make arrowhead

speed from seabed

(trompette marine like Jonah’s harp

reshuffling my raven coil

into the Argo figure

of a prow’s green furl).

Honey from spun goldfinch foil

will pour like waxen flame – the living

sœur de Jeanne d’Arc,

sourire of each undying spark –

calm rondure of a square (Thanksgiving).

5.8.17

then you shall have some pie

PIE SQUARED

Down by the Rio del Espiritu

Santo, the sun ignites

the pileated woodpecker’s

red-feathered crown.  The sky is blue,

the river flows, a serpentine

spark-shimmer, bending

rainbows to the engulfing

sea.  Dido’s shade will lean

forever toward the perimetric

oxhide rim of Carthage,

choking on her rage

with tears.  Dante’s epileptic

yearning for supernal Grace

paces her transcendental

number round a circle

of circles – like Angela Mace

Christian, or a greyhound, hunting

down that palimpsest

of muffled tracks (geist-

hand behind the arras bunting)

to find F. Mendelssohn at last –

well-tuned, unlucky sister

polishing her Easter

song (spliced to her brother’s mast).

& as my poem’s radius inches

toward her hemisphere,

its eigenvalues (fear

& hope) rhyme where it pinches

                     *

here in Mendelssohn, where children

in the shade of worlds

their parents made, unfold

a bruised & tender leaf-pattern.

The family circle is a dented

sphere.  Your twin cousin

became a ghost – the other one

a cryptic cosine (marginal)... prevented

on path P to blossoming, somehow

(obliquity of bad faith,

lack-love).  Now each wraith

in Dante’s bowl of wrath & woe

will step into your Mirror Lake

as into Galilee,

so you might slowly see

circumference of eternity – & make

amends.  Dido weeps by cave-door.

Moses goes home free,

his daughters over Lethe

summoned, as in play (Cleo,

Ophelia, Jessie...) by paddle-wheeler

quick, now, here, gone

like a Mississippian –

irrational Thanksgiving number

Guillem d’Orange (not neon, now,

but international,

beneath his Provençal

shade-grove) beheld – her wavy prow.

3.14.17

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