a glossolalia from grapevine hive

ALMOND SHELL

The gray clouds in the distance, over

the Bruegel panorama.

Coltrane, Alabama.

Hollow octave.  Windblown clover.

In the foreground, a guy named Frank.

Jeff, Joe... somebody

you know, Big Daddy?

No.  Here to clean the sewage tank.

In the garage, a long-unused canoe.

Dry almond shell,

cicada husk.  Well,

things happen.  I loved her, too.

Everything wears out like a garment,

Preacher says.  Love’s

monarch’s in the grove –

dark cedars frame him monument.

Cupped hands perform their wrinkled rite,

a mandorla for Miriam

(her longest night).  I am

your cloud-shape spinning into sight,

I am your turtledove of rose

granite.  A woven smile

gets fuzzy, chile.  Goes

bumbly, succeeding prose;

a glossolalia from grapevine hive

that only Providence

(unleafing salience)

can sail through oven husk – alive.

9.12.18

goldenrod honeybee

LAMBENT FLUTE

This bumblebee on goldenrod,

hunting the crossroad

at close of summer.  Old

Hobo character – camouflaged

in yellow-black (almost).  Henry’s

obsession with absence.

I’d go the distance

into infinite cornfields, he says.

The river subculture, the dream

of floating back home.

Churnagogue palindrome

or unknown womb... clay baptism.

The cottonwood leaves seem to flow

like golden honey, then –

in Taurida, on the autumn

wind.  Like little heart-ships, so

they swim.  Out of the tight-knit shawl,

out of the everlasting

fire.  None shall be coming

to the Father except by Son, y’all –

by way of Mother.  That absolute

Somebody – a labyrinth

of stars, wherein we are hid

like lightning bugs, or lambent flute

reflections (crane-bone twins).

Flickering far beyond

woodpecker Trebizond,

sleepwalker Knossos – wheeling fins.

8.5.18

aqueducts for bumblebees

JESTER THREADS

In the anonymous late grass,

among the stray brown

stalks like overgrown

aqueducts for bumblebees

Hobo looks off toward the flesh-

tone Mississippi bridge.

He yearns for the courage

to be like Woodpecker, in his mesh

of stealthy wasps & stolen honey –

I mean that Thunderbird,

drilling his fiery word

dovetailing out of Galilee;

the lightning rod atop the dome

whose inner lining is mosaic;

a kingfisher, whose beak

flings Geryon from his kingdom.

Late August air grows clear, autumnal.

He’ll shed his jester threads

like Hal doffs Falstaff duds

& lie down by the Rio del

Espiritu Santo.  Watch how that firebird

melts hearts into unison –

lifts into comprehension

both Jerusalem & Athens, toward

a chastened & revived Cosmopolis

where neighbor-love is measure

of the planetary future... &

then he’ll mosey back to Minneapolis.

8.24.18