conversation for kids

LITTLE PEARL

The Hebrews found a verbal replica

for Pharaoh’s pyramids.

Conversation for kids

(& sheep, & goats).  It was Jehovah

came to intervene, to interview.

Some saw an Oedipal

triangle – shadow wall

of mud-baked bricolage (dream stew);

some saw trois anges, craning down

from Paradise – to speak

with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac

(that lightning twin would play the clown).

The pyramids are office towers.

No one will explain

how so much pain

depends on callous fingers (ours).

The just one wears a diamond pin

stuck through the heart –

QUADRANS IN IMO ET

IN SUMMA SUBTILIS (wide-eyed dolphin).

The Middle of the World, he said

& made the sign of six

ways (willow sticks,

or cottonwood).  So truth’s inbred.

Her little pearl of rectitude

is portable – rides

water as a cheek glides

tears.  That’s all (beatitude).

6.28.18

El Shade-Eye

UNBROKEN SMILE

If I murmur a little in your direction,

little almond tree, lessel

mandel baum, it’s only

because you’re a little evergreen

in my heart – still leaving, leaving

from the great ash mast

where you still last, & last...

as if lashed to a breathing & grieving

breeze.  Maxims, beatitudes

sing through its rigging

(cicada-susurrus, pinging

from Maximus, Boethius)...

its compass just a simple carpenter’s

level’s bubble-eye –

a kayak reciprocity-

needle, trained on bent meteor’s

immaculate arc (unbroken smile

from sky to Ojibwa midway

way).  Immense gravity

waves emanate from a small gray pebble,

tossed off the stern like a Jonah-

pigeon, never to return –

Raven or Betyl-stone

(anchor sunk to seabed zone).

A pyramid of limestone glyphs

guards fair mum-tomb;

your skipper’s Sophie-doom

from living lips... (forever flips).

2.17.16

New Year on the river

STRANGE TENT

Nothing will be exactly as predicted

when the poem sets out,

like this ice-hung behemoth

heading south (serpent-conflicted

Mississippi, Father of Waters,

Rio del Espiritu Santo)...

& as the prophets foretold

I will make all things new (stutters

Moises, making noises like

Elijah, taking off).

Hart, like emerald elf,

leaps toward her ruby Rubicon –

somewhere beyond Milan, Miranda

(Paris, or Trebizond)...

my aerial’s magic wand

fails here, even (lost memoranda).

Only I know that steed King Richard

sought in vain – Pegasus,

rough burr-man mule (Francis) –

drums like a hidden Thunderbird

in his own battered, broken heart

(Earth’s fleet beatitude

within his grasp).  Rude

hut, strange tent, Somali hurt,

forsaken boat... the Mediterranean

salt will keep each relic

Antikythera mechanic – as

my Redeemer liveth (unforeseen).

1.1.16