have you never loved & suffered?

MOON-BEAR

Hobo crawled out of a hollow log

like a moon-bear from hibernation.

The River held him in suspension

between breaths, heartbeats (in a fog).

Have you never loved & suffered, Henry?

Do you comprehend soul-agony?

He was a Man of Sorrows, he –

acquainted with grief – like a lost penny

(Lincoln?) at the bottom of a well.

I have, Hobo.

If you want to know

I too be tarnished imago, two steps from hell.

Like who.  But I carry this flashlight

handed me by Lightning

Littletree one morning

(way back, in Providence).  It all right.

Or going to.  Everything you see

is a fresco-dream,

June-bug – the triple beam

searchlights all round (Imogen Dovie

in your mind).  I see you grinning,

Beatrice.  Bunny Rabbi

and Ignatz O’Lamb, too (hi).

This IGNIS NATURA RENOVATUR thing –

will it spin in the sky?  Little Bear,

Big Bear?  In a sloppy gyre

you may bespiral somewhere

sometime, Hobo... in your underwear?

King David hopped like a rabbi

alongside the canoe.  Micòl

was like... O well.

The pure fire is restoration, Jun-eye.

7.17.19

just beyond my window

John Gould (U.S. Navy) with root beer, Minneapolis, ca. 1946

DEEP BREATH

September crickets in the darkness

just beyond my window

harping seasonal sorrow

elegize their summer quickness.

Cassini in her pure remoteness

plunges through the rings

of Saturn.  Airy things

(that fiery opera house in Venice,

flammatory lance of Beatrice)

coalesce toward autumn,

build a nest of flame

for rangy Thunderbird (eagle-Bice).

& is it only Ouroboros?

Boreas, recycling?

The ancient iron swing

Granddad assembled (90 years

ago) still creaks its aching 2-

note plaint (see-saw,

curse-us)... as though

the Iron Age were never through.

Someone must bear it all (above

rusty Titanic murk).

My father squared his cirque

on his last day.  His eye on Love,

one grip in mine, his other hand

traced a clear circle

over that whirl-debacle

with one thin finger... with one bound

                  *

beating the bounds of that vast realm

where Jesus & Black Elk

go roamin’ (with Melchizedek).

& if a 6 turn out to be 9... at the helm

6-wingèd seraphim feather the font

of Holy Wisdom.  Little well

of do-well... purling from hell

of trompe-desire, of chaine-ressentiment;

Alighieri’s checkmated yearning

tree-hum-yuled to heart’s

lightness... O sullen art’s

deep-harrowed aim – O desperate learning!

When men fall into Minotaur’s embrace

& Ariadne’s thread

snaps at the nail-head

one slight Rabbi-hair, O Falcon-Ace

might lift you from the corral waste

into fellowship

of Primavera soul-skip;

where lovely Manto-lips taste

intelligible everlasting bliss –

a porpoise laughs at death

& with one deep breath

huffs cobwebs off God’s gold telos :

that gardener of souls at dawn

lifting a toiling Job-

of-all-work by his nob...

Rachel out-sailing Ahab... Queequeg’s fin.

9.14.17

Shakespearean marzipan

THREE BEARS

Behind fine axe-hewn basalt

of the Incan hive, an eye

like Aaron Siskind, maybe –

quick, delicate, alert.

Mortised ramparts of any state

mark its mandala-border;

stone blooms of order

warp twisters of love & hate.

Only this human heart of flesh

harbors invisible diamond –

petal-scent of almond,

marzipan snowstorm (baked fresh).

Imagine one simplified snowflake

in three dimensions, spinning

like a gyroscope (one wing,

one leg) after one thunder-shake

of glassy dome – Will’s trident, maybe

in a late romance (Blackfriar’s

globe).  King Henry sires

trouble for himself – falls into sea

pursued by Bear.  Near Normandy,

flagship goes down – she’s lost,

it seems – until at last

Hermione steps forth, sleepy...

La Paix (familial, civil, global)

breathes yet, to dance once more.

It was Sir Thomas More,

lapped in bearskin, at the North Pole

                 *

who played the bear, who played the fool;

who played Disoriented Lamb

bleating I am, I am,

who flit the snowflake (melting soul);

his mother (Everywoman, from

Mulberry Street) wept

for the shame; she slept,

& it was glory in the end.  Hum

flickers (pictures in a whisper gallery).

The cranium of Unknown

Soldier wears the crown.

Empires of high frozen sophistry

shudder beneath an infant’s smiling

gaze.  It’s not the wise

who find the way (surprise!)

but every lovey-dovey Sing-Sing

resident – repentant heart, meek

mule.  Chaste planetary

hearth, Psyche-egalité –

bright thunder-akme... slant, oblique

world-pirouette... Hagia Sophia

in a peacock’s fan.  Tango,

barefoot kid’s fandango

under the sky-vaults in Ravenna –

light of my light & yours,

Waltz of Three Bears

by Mendelssohn.  Flares

Franciscan, by Pacific shores.

6.14.17

figure for equality

DOUBLE LINE

The Mississippi mottled with ice

a milky translucence

in the limpid air.  Sense

of coral rings solidifying.  Twice

& twice... smoky astigmatism

of a sundog rainbow.

Miss Destiny, Hobo.

Frescoed Siena formalism –

sweet couch of Pax, Justitia,

grave horsehair salience.

A gray circumference

of flags, targets... the palm of Jonah

read into fragile cat’s-cradle

or spiderweb.  A disk

of gold nailed to a casque

(louis, doubloon) – mandala-medal

for Hamlet’s mettle (or Macbeth).

Time circles on a nail;

therein hangs a tail.

Serious blasts off the mast of death.

The little copperplate landscape

of Tower Hill (the Witch’s

Hat) my mother etched

reminds me of Big Bear’s last scrape –

Henry’s author – the buried man

on Arthur Ave.,

#33 (just below

that rise) – black Denmark sun

                   *

son of Dragon Pen.  & round

the table in my heart

Little Bear will shout

for joy – recomposing the sound

of Mendelssohn, his neighborhood

(old Arthur St., where

we’d begun).  Circular

the agate labyrinth, dark with the blood

of Jonah Fisher-King.  The gray

bird croons in the tamarack.

The rigid Minotaur is back –

orange Leviathan in search of prey;

only a copper penny in a well

might draw the milky-grey

dolphin to leap this way,

& breach his livid traitor’s spell.

Only a moon-shot Camelot;

only a breathing dream.

Green island scheme

lifted from pyramidal plot

to float – an almond eye within

a double line, one lofty

figure for equality.

Sign of a Jonah resurrection

(life-saver up from hurricane). 

So pearls shine from a shell

beneath deep ocean-swell,

Earth circling Maypole again.

2.5.17

he was no Big Fish

SWEET CORDELIA

Like a Showy Ladyslipper in the woods

unseen by all except

chipmunks (scrabbling adept

through silent clerestories of dead

cedars) Hobo strayed, from Ursus

Major to St. Apollinaire;

he was no Big Fish, barely

a minnow Star du Nord (Jesus

his seine-maître, toiling away

upstream).  America

steamed on, formica-

sleek, pregnant with Labor Day

& White-Tailed Rabbit & Polar Bear

looked on, from cell blocks

melting in the superflux.

The Man of Concrete was no longer there

(he’d cried himself to sleep).  Henry

by a berried Berryman

stood by, his Resurrection

Plot cartooned in St. Paul snow (flaky);

apathetic Oblomov, at the gazebo

spied Olga in the distance –

wading through native plants

like sweet Cordelia coming to rescue

jet-bagged Lear.  Earth dangled

from one silver hair,

suspended over the bear-

cave (striped with blood, star-bangled).

9.7.16

"Pinecone", by Marcia McEachron

Rock Candy Neva-Neva trail

LIMESTONE PROFILE

The little white cabbage moth

& the dragonfly, following

Hobo down his bumbling

Rock Candy Neva-Neva path

beside the river.  Past the bridge

nearly finished, almost

restored... some ghost

dance out of Petersburg (knowledge

from chaste vision – redemption

blooming like a morning

glory – everything trembling

at the dawn of time – the Galilean

tacking in the wind across the lake

zigzagging like a monarch

slanting orange-black

over sumac, milkweed – to be forsaken

& his cup to take)...  So the dream of a girl

is the grail of a dream, when

startled Magdalen

beholds him (where fern-worlds unfurl).

Like a fiddlehead figurehead, a nettle

Beatrice, the dream ramifies;

what was there always

unveils, the whole sweet kernel-coracle –

as Hobo finds his bearings in the smile

of a limestone Ursus profile,

in the lofty Milky Whale

of a firefly Jonah (rainbow trail).

9.6.16

remote highways

DANCING BEAR

The multifarious facets of this vine

are emerald-veined, to catch

the sun – each tendril-latch

anchors cucumber to mosquito screen.

Shade-ravines along remote highways

or melancholy tamaracks

up north... waltz parallax

on Ocean Road (revolving maze).

Hobo, drowsing at Camp Who-He-

Who-She-Wah, slipped

down a culvert, overstepped.

His gravity condensed to mercury –

a silver thread of frozen fire;

sum of all his non-

action, his diffident un-

charity (dead fisheye in the mire).

As if the shining labyrinth,

Ariadne’s fever-chart,

led inward (part

angel, part beast).  One leaden plinth,

one stony-crumb foundation (churled).

One personal scar

of sorrow, raveled far

down Rua Tonimminotaur.  Pearled

diamond from Tsyan-Shizi, or

Marienbad – her glance

a glint, a last-chance-

ghost, a smile (for dancing bear).

9.2.16

Walk through the mirror

MINOR TEAR

Bleak winter shades... crows in the trees

beak-gnashing, rasping (caw-

caw, hawk-hawk).  Low

Earth, rotund silentium (dregs, lees).

Stillness of still-life – Brown Decades

(hoist Peto).  The Just Man

imago is just a man –

barely there, through simple glades

of green.  Mirror Lakes liked him,

in Mendelssohn.  Only

an infinitely gently-shivery

Rabbi, Hiawatha Honeybear – bro Jim,

our lunky logos (penny-loafing).

Who bears it all, past

He- or She-Cat’s paste-

up Geryon-masque (a scary nothing).

This maze contains a minor tear.

& through a crevice there

one Ariadne hair

leads you to almond-gold rain-bear.

Earth seethes with ziggurats of fraud

& blind men lash themselves

to violence (selva

oscura mitts gorilla code);

but it shall not be so with thee.

Bunny hikes one eye

& looks for wheeling Eli

to come by (benevolent memory).

3.3.16

Time is of the essence

I was never much good at baseball.  My last major stint was with the Hopkins (MN) Mighty Mites, when I was about 10 (ca. 1962).  Purple uniforms.  I remember the baseball field seemingly down in my bones somewhere (beneath the amnesiac brain).

In high school (where I focused on soccer) I had a very special English teacher, John Anderson, who radiated encouragement & good cheer to would-be writers like me.  In our school at that time, each teacher, and every senior, had to make an oration before the whole student body.  Mr. Anderson, for his part, read a baseball poem.  I can't recall the poet, or much of the poem - only the refrain : "time is of the essence".  It was about the national game.  I think I was so impressed by his performance that a few years later, when it was my turn to speak, I read a poem of my own (not about baseball).

This poem is about baseball, in a way.  It's also about iconic people, role models so-called.  In fact it's a kind of allegorical poem.  If you think of Dante's explication of the fourfold allegory of his Divina Commedia, this thing exhibits a similar symbolic layering.  How does it go - literal, moral, allegorical, anagogical?  Something like that.  On one of these levels lurks the idea that "Yogi Berra" - man, person - allegorically "stands for" something deeper, more universal.  But I'll leave it at bat.  Stee-rike!

HOME PLATE

                                the game ain’t over till it’s over

How the figure of a man at 90

(any man or woman, see)

becomes transparently

rough diamond, somehow... Yogi?

Behind home plate, in empty lot

traced over waste land,

he crouches – hokey Panda

Bear (wry antic square root

bassist of the base, Neanderthal).

Signals from the crotch

each crypto-kingfish pitch

plumb perfect (Sasquatch cone-ball).

Yankee stars wheel over stadium

where Little Bear paints

himself into pinstripe

corner (gray silo Te Deum);

Big Bear, worried, waves him off

Indian mound (a brave

9 innings) – takes a dive.

Let’s go explore the bottom of

the harbor, little lamb of mine.

I’m gonna let you shine.

Beatrice was a 9-

man game – for 28 seasons

soused us with spray of lilac

Liberty bells (for free).

Between you & me

the wave flows everywhere, Smolak.

9.24.15