Henry having a royal fit

ARIADNE’S CROWN

A limpid morning, Palm Sunday.

In the little woods

behind the Shriners’ (closed)

Hospital, gaunt oaks lift branches high

in anxious supplication (to an emerald

Acorn King).  Prince Hal,

scion of OK Gal, in his corral

of febrile & uneasy crowns, grows bold –

to place his father’s own upon his brow

in the Jerusalem Chamber

(where Huck & Jim clamber

aboard… that cardboard scow,

the trumped-up King of England’s dhou).

The river bends, reverent

& full of revery (blent

with the clay into its royal slough).

You boy, there!  Yes you, boy –

rivery O-buoy!  Come here!

King David shall appear

& dance – like naked singularity

or Solomonic wormhole, full of sacred

density – before the Ark!

& with the flicker of a quark

the center of the galaxy turns red

& churns like furnace of the cosmic kiln –

inverted mirror of MLKy

Y’Way – so massively

reflecting (like a missile-toed oak-gall)

*

that mauve & scarlet Rooster of the Day

who chants his clear call

to Event Horizon Wall

& leads the Magi home – another way!

M87 – black hole (multiplied

by 56, at least) –

from center of the feast

of lights – preternatural Virgo, Argo-eyed

Hagia Sophia – Isis of Ocean River

barge!  Prince Hal

trembles now, elliptical

epileptic – empty Apollo quiver…

overshadowed by that Thunderbird

shadow-of-shadows (el Rio

del Espiritu Santo).

His Ariadne’s Crown only a word

for the implicit eagle’s nest of silence

where the plague-eddies

of blind King Eddy

disappear into Big Muddy, & the dense

congregation of the Humble One

who rides a mule into town

(distance-divided by their own

disease, their wrangles for the crown) –

are suddenly hushed before those lips

mute-smiling, like a rose canoe;

those palms, encircling us now

in one speechless embrace… (love-clasp).

4.5.20

if I walk through this wormhole

LEAN MUSIC

If I walk with Hobo through this wormhole

at the bottom of a zigzag

Mississippi... will I see Cesca Tag

again, when we were young (my soul)?

In Providence?  Et tu, S2?

Picketing the perimeter

of Sagittarius A*,

noting that gravitational tug, you

sense her there, the ghost star...

back of an ecce-crypt

time-vacancy you slipped

through (holeworm, treacherous sailor).

Lean music of the sunflower.

Tall spirit loyal to the sky.

Your gravity a steel gateway,

oar-eye – florescing tacit power.

So this gold Einstein-Rosen bridge

domed by the Milky Way

shines like a lighthouse ray

into a monarch’s heart.  You wedge

there, anxiously, between her wings,

like the child in the blindfold

when a Black Ship sailed...

til tenderly his midnight origami brings

enfoldment to the nth dimension;

Liberty her royal seal

in beeswax, breathing... feel,

Hamlet, soft sunlight’s restoration!

11.19.19

milk of All Souls'

DARTING GLANCE

               to Reinhard Genzel & Andrea Ghez

For decades, the rival astronomers

– Genzel, male, & female

Ghez – aimed instrumental

eyes toward the heart of the cosmos –

muted piano key of the galaxy.

Genzel flung his telescopic

javelin (atmospheric

annihilator) toward a dusty

shoulder of Chiron (the man-horse,

Sagittarius) while Ghez

gazed from the Andes,

waiting, measuring her course.

From the center of the Centaur

the whisper of a signal,

as from Eye of Bull.

As if from his maze, a Minotaur

murmured – beckoned toward his lair

in the galaxy’s grave

(her gravity-cave,

light-shrouding tomb of Milky Way).

As if across the Black Sea

the shadow of the Argo,

like a winged hippo-

horse, shaped signal-symmetry –

echo of those sunken galleys

encrypted on the salty

floor – an Ariadne-

thread from Sagittarius

                *

as on a line from eye to Ghez

its waver-tremor moved

from Memphis to beloved

son... a bullet-train (just MLK’s).

We’re standing on that floor of sound.

The black hole marks an end

for time & space – a frond

of palm marked Jonah, on a ground

of milky whale-spume.  There

he stands, in her eye

of hurricane – not angry,

mild – her Son of Man, her heir

of air, from navel of gravity

humming his servant-

song (for a new advent

of justice, lovingkindness, charity).

Where Ocean River shapes galactic

horseshoe lakes (whorls,

eddies of fresh worlds

and clear water) your prophetic

Nazir chants his invitation

to return to life – joy

spiraling unceasingly

from springing restoration

of all things; eternity

undying, in that heart

where all the rivers start –

her darting glance, from middle C.

10.31.18

beneath gray Bruegel sky

WAVE-CRADLE

Crows ink beneath gray Bruegel sky.

A line from A to B

zigzags spacetime – see?

So raven vanishes in Noah’s eye.

Between two points, a yawning Ocean.

Infinite intensity

of black-hole density

draws yesterday into its spin.

What is your personal specific gravity?

The poem is gray pebble,

obscure soldat (trouble

for no one).  Ordinary Smitty

whose greatcoat pocket holds an agate.

Lodestone of a jay

tracing King’s Highway

into the calyx of a ruse (checkmate).

It is Path P, the chi-rho

branch – diamond

mandala of almond;

Black Elk milk road (ey yo).

Love is the tread between twin pillars –
only a glance of weightless

spiderweb.  Inverness

of vernal tenderness... wind, stars...

when the bow sways in its wave-cradle

& Ithaca, Iona, Eire

lift like green fire

Skye-perpendicular – familiar grail-dreidel.

1.25.17

Black holes have rings of light straw hair

SCRIMSHAW TRINKET

                    It’s the past that tells us who we are.  Without it

                    we lose our identity.  –  Stephen Hawking

A raven carried heaven-manna

out of the ark to lonesome

Jonah – him just come

from under the whale-rib (manna

overboard) stranded on sand

off Galilee, RI –

& it made him cry.

Those crispy cackles he couldn’t

understand – like low gull-talk

sent through a black-

hole paradox;

light straw climbed an orange rock

from the event horizon up to

null infinity –

it was all catenary,

looped in one wave-smile... – who?

Gravity? – or Grace?  Eurydice,

maybe.  (It was her cave.)

Spoiled meat you crave

is portioned by division – say,

two doves for every plowman’s mule.

Queequeg in his casket

(like a scrimshaw trinket)

penned our sempiternal Rule –

each rustic Penny in the well of night

was tender out of love.

Her vernal sparkle-trove

is polyglot – Euphrasia (eyebright).

6.8.16

Monk's Mound (Illinois)