Traverse des Sioux

LITTLE CROW

Down by the Minnesota River

choked with fertilizer –

shallow brown water of

Traverse des Sioux.  It was here

the white man stole the territory

with treaty signed in smoke

(fake handshake, mock

friendship).  We didn’t mean it – sorry.

Eleven years later (1862)

starved, dispossessed

the scar broke open (led

by blue, reluctant Little Crow).

Extermination of the buffalo

echoed the reservation

camp.  To build a nation

all these savages must go.

The lightweight arc of birch canoe

is like an eyebrow (wingbone

frame, sutured to one

Rose Island – lamp of Manitou).

We’re limping back to Providence.

The whole grotesquerie

of violence & perfidy

to be forgone (washed in the silence

of the sea).  Down Mississippi way

you feel a salty shell wash

through fingers... an eyelash

leach one tear, slowly.  Hey ey.

12.11.17

Greyhound to Galilee

SWEET CHARIOT

You rode the midnight Greyhound

through American backwaters.

Past hobo squatters

inside their high lonesome vault (profound

infinite firefly field).  No one

forgets their bent magnetic

North, your epileptic

adolescence (endlessness).  The sun,

the moon, the Pope, the Emperor...

some bright Hiawatha rider,

beaming father-figure –

Federigo in Jerusalem, hugging an Emir...

History slides by on billboards,

Burma-Shave proverbs.

The Greyhound hums, curves

down Vanishing Road – the Lord’s

a baby buffalo.  Around the track

the sprinters skim – a blear

of fog machines, the air

nine tenebrae.  One shady (humpback)

tesseract glides into Galilee –

Gödel infinity

or Miriam smile (she

saw her tall cousin suggest a V);

the mirror of authority

in heaven & on earth

wells supernatural mirth –

sweet chariot of Lady Liberty.

8.11.16

In the vein of Atlantis

SUNSET GATE

Spring, a project of the Earth.

While she waits for Homo Sapiens

to get over his aggressions –

revert to innocence (a Maypole mirth).

In the beginning... all the begins

of the Beguines... the big

innings.  Whirligig

of river-prairie syncopations...

I went down into the Bottomland,

down to Monk’s Mound.

A Mississippi sound,

a tuning fork of lightning (&

thunder).  I looked into my hand

& felt a gentle eye

look back (speaks Ioway).

Fishnet... veil of mystery... grand

Isis-Life.  Her cryptic tripod

out of Flanders fields

(a Jenna-quivering) yields

Triple-Flem – from Seeker linchpad

over Providence, through keystone

arc, westward... stray

crois (her sunset Gate) –

one orange firetread in the ozone,

warped on muddy waters (surging

to Lousanna).  So

the shield of Buffalo-

Mandan feathers her circlet (corralling).

5.10.16

from Monk's Mound (Cahokia, Illinois)

Statue of Isis (West Branch, Iowa)

The one who got away

TRAIN-HORNS

The raven-message in the ink gets blurred

in the dark.  Signal fades

over badlands.  Wade’s

gone upstream, Charlie – overheard

her talking about the telephone.

One with the wheel-dial

we used to use.  I’ll

call you in three days, Persephone.

Grace made this little linen hanging

with palm greenery, with

red specks for eyes.  So Phoebe

set to compass-pointing in a painting –

hand-prints, fingerprints, green

dolphins breaching in

a fling... theremin

flute-song – ghost dance for Iowa

maiden (midden remains).  400 years

in Utah, seems like,

they danced.  A snake

coppered up in a trance – cheers

for the livid buffalo (the one

who got away)!  I

don’t know, Charlie –

she’s pretty mad.  The whole corn

crop is blown to smithereens.

Hazel threw her whistle

in the purple thistle –

thorns crown hills.  Train-horns...

10.2.15