somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave

CAHOKIAN GIFT

The sun peeks through this February weather

as a frail reed or fluted candle

finds a chink in some Siberian

prison wall.  United States are altogether

in states of disarray today.  Tonight

the President’s speech will

be, no doubt, a veritable

trompe l’oueil – he will not make it right.

Henry too lingers in his fog

of disaffection.  Absent

from his Hobo-tent,

divided from his tiny tree-frog

peeper (cooing like a mourning dove

no larger than a copper penny –

greenish rust, gone silver Jonah

now, somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave).

He hears relentless Ocean River

bend the zodiacs toward clay,

Big Muddy bearing all away

into her coral Nephthys-quiver;

chambers of Coatlicue

like dead bee hives, storing

the crystallized outpouring

(zigzag red-black raven roundelay).

O motionless Greek urn, still turning,

Ezekiel-bones, still yearning!

Redeem Time’s churning

revolutions, Adonai – transfiguring

                        *

North Star!  You mantle humankind

like that Madonna della Misericordia

Piero della Francesca frescoed –

tricolor umbrella-shelter for the blind!

For Agape is a magnetic prong, threads

taconite to one Itasca

lady’s slipper (showy!) – &

drops rusty anchor of Rhode Island reds

into a lambent western window-rose

(mauve, scarlet, violet & blue)

where Hope beams into view –

& from her constant fortitude still glows!

So anchor Henry’s trembling canoe

deep in your heart-of-hearts’

matrix – where timespace floats –

in that classy garage Micòl showed you;

your forsaken Byzantine three-master

beached in parochial nowhere,

ferrying Alighieri into air.

Where the mosaic wave of our disaster

cradles in the love that heals despair

& shimmers there, like Juliet

walked back from fatal plummet

or Henry Bear, helped from his chair

of perilous dismay (to restoration

& recovery).  So lift

my hokey Cahokian gift

up to your Eye of Providence… Union.

2.4.20

like an 8-ball in a canyon

HELIUM BALLOONS

Thus the poem is a free agent,

loosed from its cannon

like an 8-ball in a canyon.

We could go on – what they meant

you know.  Dante was getting on

when he stopped by Sant’

Apollinare.  The slant

of loneliness caresses its panopticon

of painterly rainbow eyes & forms,

afloat overhead

like a Macy’s parade

on Thanksgiving Day (enormous

helium balloons of adoration

under an umbrella

of matryoshka nesting-

dolls, like an infinite function

in rose granite aegis, arcs-

over-arcs).  In her eyes,

the grace of God buys

time with molten agape-caritas.

Jesus emerges from the cave.

Mary faints in the garden,

dream bent back again

to Gödel (his suspended-7th grave).

Her incompleteness theorem

is like Easter in 2020,

always there already

(gleaming ring, undying diadem).

12.29.19

come here, baby Minotaur

SEA-SAND

Love is the end & the beginning.

Cave-artists in Sulawesi

drew pigments from red scree

for their wild pigs, dwarf buffalo (zing

go the arrows of the sacred hunters,

therianthropes).  44,000

years in burial mound

(palm-prints on wooden posts for pointers).

Desire in soggy adolescent clay

molts to perversity

or rises to chaste clarity;

smiles of mothers & fathers slay

the stony-hearted Minotaur

with a burl of soft air

(light for the maze-lair).

Love circles back to where you are.

Come here, baby Minotaur,

you’re going to dance with me.

Concrete comes from the sea-

sand; this milk is from a star.

I’myeh spirit helper, Jonah Raven.

Take this clay, spit

into your hand, & roll it,

mold it to your eye.  There’s Ocean-

Ouroboros, glowing in the deep.

That’s Milky Way, that’s

Morning Star... your heart’s

a coracle, Cordelia (wake beyond sleep).

12.12.19

I dream a general restoration

CONTRA-DANCE

The early ice on the Mississippi

forms a maze of frozen

eddies, a chaos of cotton-

wood leaves on glass, all dark & ripply.

Somber November drawing on

toward JB’s Janus-mouth.

Slight man, moth-

light, leaf-blown from iron span.

I dream a general Restoration

cousin, cuz.  Because

our love that never was

lies crypted in a deeper congregation

of earthworms... Earth-life...

this pumpkin-celebration

where each seed is someone

like a minuscule canoe (collective

buoyancy, anchored in agape).

Not that Cyclops-utopia

ice-locked with Satana

– imperador del doloroso regno, nay!

Rather a contra-dance of Earth

& Sky, a balancing

of stillness with evolving –

clay vase molded into mirth

by humble presence of the king

(of servant-kings).  A single

molecule of brine (NaCl)

is tabernacle bread & wine (of everything)

                            *

& you will meet her in the ordinary courtyard

of the everyday (she’s Everywoman-

Everyman).  This is a vision

of figure & ground.  She’s walking toward

you, now... like Roger Williams, stepping through

twin pillars on the Terrace...

Providence, a place

of mercy & discretion (fair & true).

I cannot put it into words, this waltz

of swirling time & high

eternity.  It is the sky

spanning the sea.  It is the salt

in everything; it is the molten dove

dive-bombing into clay

who joins you in a sway

of hurtling dancers (Milky Way

a-sarabanding, up above).  I cannot

put it into words.

The brutal violence

(stone-hearted ignorance) surds in a knot

of self-destruction, planetary waste

& You must turn & repent

cries San Francesco, bent

upon his imitatio Christi (feet laced

with scars).  It is the Via Francigena.

You will walk back to the river

sped with such a pulse... her

springing from the graveyard (Magdalena).

11.7.19

to shade the children from the burning sun

my Hobo Code coffee cup

WAVE-THRUMS

I’m coming to the crown of the river-tree

& the mouth of the copper serpent

following Hobo, where she bent

toward the Delta of American poetry.

& there’ll be singing & dancing, each clown 

hootin’-&-a-hollerin’

& dressed up like an Indian

to celebrate the simple joy of Union.

& I’ll trail behind Benjamin Latrobe

the good mason of Washington

taking after his dear son

to build a floating city from mosquito-glob;

I’ll watch that Phoenix-bird arise

like an evening Jonah,

spreading her ghost-persona

wings from Frisco Bay to Providence

to shade the children from the burning sun

& fly them to a new playground

where wave-thrums sound

their steady oceanic Truth for everyone

whose eyes merge in the Sophie-bark

curving over the Churnagogue

(octagonal pine-log

hover-canoe; dynamic-ceramic arc

empowered by the muscled wheel

of hopeful human clay)

– J-stroking toward an Agape

aflow to share, to guide, to lift, to heal.

8.20.19

from Hecate came the Kali-Bear

GLOOMY RECESS

Brrr.  Encased in winter nadir.

A word stings like a burr

in my ear, grown morbider.

Out of California.  Excalibur.

Poe’s gloomy recess.  Ceiling

flickering with Neva-light

(limbeck of Hecate).

Ligeia, Solominka... cryptic feeling.

Juliet, embalmed upon a wounded,

senseless word, while

murder dogs each exile

in a stumbling Republic – hounded

refugees are coldly wrenched

from their own children.

What will you do, Hen?

Keep chanting mantra, teeth clenched.

From Hecate came the Kali-Bear,

Blake, Brown, Black –

stuffed Russian Monarch,

Cuffy from the Arctic (Polar) –

Crowned with the crown & splendor

– like Inẽs de Castro, here

in the casque of my ear,

my dear; of violence the silky daughter;

his banner over me was Love.

Your coming-forth, Psyche-

Persephone – out of the sea

in Frisco Bay – out of the starry cove

                     *

laving the Golden Gate, your destiny –

Old Glory Red, & Irish

Green, & Maple Sugar swish

your seal, ex-Californ– Aieeee...

– over the Bay.  Bears baring

every fang, & bearing

everything – boars goring

every Tarquin – innocence betraying!

So follow Hobo Henry’s burro

as he burrows through

her barrow – thorough

ravishing of hollow tumulo!

She’s flown, sweet Thunderbird.

& like Aurora Borealis

hovers above all this

flag-draped befuddlement (light-ward).

Ghost-haunted Morning Star,

Virgo-Astraea –

apotheosis of Sophia,

milky mosaic your dancing floor –

step your basilica sans fear;

the agate lamp atop

your Gate will not stop

raying back toward D.C., dear.

Columbia & Liberty will shine

their sister-lights within

your ark’s palladion;

Agape will this rage refine.

3.9.19

be manifest, be imminent

TUSCAN HILLS

Nestled in his city of rivers & bridges,

hidden in his cabin

of Lincoln logs, alone

like that baby screech owl (wedged

in his cozy cottonwood hideout)

Hobo will contemplate

his May-time temperate

zone, his mild creation, riverine, remote.

Knotted by Amor – like an Incan quipu-

net, like a ruby bud

of that burbling Word

afloat so murkily nearby (his Brook of Q).

Ahav-be-manifest – be imminent

as hale touché-scapegoat

whose royal honey-kismet

soldered Okean to oak – bent

light to leaden doomroad (East

to West).  Jerusalem

gleams in the sun – shalom,

shalom to the returning one!  A feast

for the soul of yon American

blindfolded rambler.

Holy fool, shambler-

yurodivy, from Voronezh to San Fran

you’ll meander, like an old river

& mumble of a Union

equable & all-human –

soft Tuscan hills, moss-green forever.

5.3.18

your whiskey mule

IRIS-ARCH

The bulb in a wild Chinese lantern

is a bright orange berry,

edible, tart (very).

Little octagon amid the fern-

pine forest, summer Halloween

memento mori; lamp

in Thanksgiving pumpkin,

blood-orange earring for a queen.

My cedar gazebo in the rain

magnifies your painted

facets.  I’m your slanted

saint, beaming gray Bretagne

matière, like old Guillaume d’Orange

in his gelato-cool

Gellone prayer cell –

the armored ape (‘tis passing strange)

grown peaceable & rocky-mild.

Repentant berry-man

in shady homespun

camouflage (as orange span stilled

leaping crag to crag – a frisky

beggar-stag in Frisco

Bay).  My Lady, O

high-hearted votary!  Your whiskey

mule I’ll be – show stigmatized

tattoos you needled through

cliff-jagged river-scars to

radiant Pacific blue... baptized

                *

in Minnehaha Falls – by Manitou!

Her figurehead (surmised

miraculous surprise)

bobs like green fiddlehead, unfurling You!

Blue-green pine haze of Tian Shan,

whose snow-cone peaks

harbor bright lightning streaks

& pure transparency of oxygen...

be like her molten meteoric smile

my natal cog upon

whose wheel of rose spun

hurtling through light’s peristyle

into galactic congregations

sharing pain et vin –

Melchizedek’s Come in,

my wounded daughters – prodigal sons!

The berry, man, the berry lives,

though crypted in the cradle

of an origami grail –

sun of Manitou, sum of beehives!

That copper moss-green Lady

in the harbor lifts her torch

as an intelligible iris-arch,

so read the sign : her rainy-shady

smoke-signal, pine-scented candle

of a little tree – her fiery

omnipresent Amor, mirrory

agate Agape, all blumen (mandel).

5.17.17

unfurling Providence

ANGE D’OR

Pythagoras & Aristotle

felt both stars & sun

move (by persuasion

of love) around the atlatl

of the Pole – slow sarabande

of heart’s desire (my soul

pines for your solo Yule

just so, trompette marine).  &

though we scoff now, Harry,

your wedding dance is just

a veiled illusion – dust

on cosmic rewind, arbitrary –

yet those ripples on the strand

projecting gracefully

sound waves of sea

through particles of sand

put me in mind of relativity,

so that behind this mesh

of silken crossweave rush

soft murmurs (hush little baby,

don’t you cry)...  & a kind face

beyond divisibility

windy invisibility

ghostly ellipse of human race

gathers in gravity & mass

like a cloud-pebble

or magnified Hubble-

infinitesimal, lifted by windlass

                 *

into a masque of morning glory

from the outer darkness

with a rose compass

to inward salience (galactic story

of grave milky equilibrium

outlasting mirror-war

of swollen Minotaur

to bind the wounds with honey-balm).

The Earth’s unfurling Providence.

Slow-forming pearl

beneath the gray whorl

of a clay-worn shell – immense

agate of Agape, threaded

with light gold fleece

around a centerpiece

of Paradise (salt bread

& wine out of a stone casket).

Indomitable almond

branch, a blooming wand

cut for a lilac shoot, whose trumpet-

vine leans like a flinty mule

against vain headwinds

to Pacific ends –

vast azure of a wingspan’s rule,

bright Gate of international

ange d’or (meek door

for lambs, forevermore).

So sighs your shell, antiphonal.

2.9.17

sleights of memory

MOSAIC SEA

Calm bronze serpent zigzags through

November Indian summer.

The northern light is clear

in smoky autumn – mirrors you.

What you cherish will remain

in sleights of memory.

A wheeled mosaic sea

en masque – galactic Halloween

as out of Egypt swam the sun

of Man (Apollinaire

with calumet, plein air)

& left his tempered wrath, his sunken

jealousy behind (dark backward

bones, full fathom five).

Ikhnaton’s beehive,

a honeyed hexagon – God

being pure agape (Manitou,

magnanimous & kind).

Sleepwalking blind

only the dream revives you –

only a breath of homely air

(smoke lifting gracefully,

light’s equanimity).

Chaste akme of the meteor –

a Lincoln logos, omnipresent;

curving profile of a brow

figuring Noah’s prow –

tender basilica to dancing bent.

11.2.16

antipodean parks

SILVER CHEST

Uncle George the plowman zigzags calmly

weaving his furrows back 

& forth (west of Fond du Lac).

Laboring almost at rest, along his way.

The black soil teems with memories.

Childhood in Mendelssohn,

a helium balloon –

only now the fatal pine shades Miriam’s

plein air Jubilee (specific gravity

of coffin-keel).  Time,

History here touch the rim

of a labyrinth (Fro-Back, so corny)

whose perimeter outlines her face –

smiling, dreaming, lost

in the supple meadow-grass

of Eros flowering to Agape (O Grace).

Spruce Mountain rises straight ahead,

pilgrim – just south of Bonnie

Craigielee.  Matilda will be

waltzing there, in a tamarack shade

not far from the sea; she will take your hand

where kids’ bird-voices

boomerang – where earth rejoices

in equilibrium, & equity.  One command

radiates Franciscan swag of turtledove;

one cloud sheds orange arcs

over antipodean parks

of aboriginal penitence (blue Jonah-love).

8.22.16

painting by Phoebe Gould (about age 10)

across languages & worlds

CEDAR HANDS

O calm August river, weaving

under your ceiling of gray

fluff!  I’d like to say

you are a figure for Edith, rocking,

singing Sophie to sleep, somewhere

above Ethiopian night.

I’d like to formulate

a lamp in a window, out there

on a foggy lump in Narragansett Bay –

Rose Island Light, maybe –

what stands for certainty

in the midst of rocky sea, the sway

of tide.  They’re almost finished now

with the bridge repair.

Her double eyebrows bear

their concrete filigree, & show

twin circles in the river’s glass.

Their delicate embrace

a fractal carapace

for curving lips of one round lass –

a sea-green pebble, calipered

by radiant massive Einstein

armature.  So shine,

my lighthouse pine – like shy brown bird

or Great Blue Heron – one sharp eye

across the moving waters!

Agape holds stars

in loving stillness – rhyming sky

                      *

with earth.  It is an ur-rhyme, personal –

a Neva-petroglyph,

an anchored spider-skiff,

chaste common akme (Eeyore-humble);

like moony pleb with sunny Phoebus,

roaming Apollinaire

with domed Apollinaris,

Love is that hearth-melding force

that fuses Unity & Liberty –

soul freedom is the spark

of arcs.  I found a monarch,

lonely, in the donkey straw you see

down by the iron river (pausing,

perhaps, between White

House & Soldier’s Rest).

We bowed to one another, browsing

sheared grass, cordially.

The song began like this –

a dream made manifest,

Railsplitter... prodigal Boy...

held in grey threads of dog days’

dawnlight.  Soft rainbow

pigeon croon – low

throaty turtledove song-maze –

dream-songe across the meadowlands

of languages & worlds

farfalla-far – she whirls

& jags... floats into cedar hands.

8.12.16

Franklin Ave. Bridge