eclipse for equal lips

LOWLY COIN

Twilight at mid-day, then rain

after the eclipse.  Little

Sophie’s 4th.  A medal

made of bronze; a lowly coin

of copper green.  Absinthe air

around the monuments.

The sickly shade of dense

black sun... Monday’s gone Friday

everywhere.  Whisper it back

to me, slowly, slowly.

Parallax of late Dante,

his painful feet beneath a wrack

of Roman marble, winking tesserae...

only a rain in Voronezh.

Profile of a Chaadev pledge

to 4th estate – soul freedom, aye.

Vladimir – that other one, with

the unpronounceable name –

wanders Wyoming

(motels, mountains).  His Monarch myth,

his Morpho blues, his regal soul

from coal-speck diamond –

a parabolic almond

subtext (Rorschach mirror-bowl).

Lincoln-ghost, Vallejo cheekbones...

chaste sign of equal lips.

Sophie’s green foot trips

through her basilica’s midnight sunstones.

8.21.17

still life life still

STANDARD MODEL

So summer, Susanna, slowly, slowly

decelerates, among the weeds

& celery, the radish seeds.

&, painted into a corner, quietly

arrives full stop.  Like Peto

still life.  Or Adagietto

seeping on the Lido.

Gradually.  More things, Horatio,

than are dreamt of...  Plumb pleroma

if you can, Hobo –

speak what we feel we know,

somehow.  Premonitions (like a

wind-blown pennant toppling

at Little Big Horn).

Do not compare, Son

of the Morning Star (glass tippling);

you are the only one of a kind

Wakan Tanka.  To come

back from the grave... some

stretch, Hermione.  Out of your mind?

The Blue Morpho of Vladimir

eludes his abstract net –

yet he’ll catch a Hazel.

Bet.  Meet your double in a mirror

(is good luck, not bad).  The way

a doubting Peter folds

a king of hearts, & holds

the diamond.  One homing ray

                *

unlocks the elephant casket (gold-

lined interior, with keys

to inside story)

figured by Jonah, Susanna – double

coracles conveying chronicles

to Finland, now, for you.

Finis.  He’s us, too.

With eyes like Mirror Lakes

in Mendelssohn, down Arthur Street

(the once & future thing).

Two heavy charms, making

an up-quark reddish baryon, Snoopy –

hiccups of a Higgs bison, maybe?

Concerns which we cannot

discern at CERN, just yet.

Professor Nyet beside the Neva...

– Knock it off, Nobby.  That Large

Hadron won’t bunt the Standard

Model for 1000 millionths of

a billionth of a second, pard.  No, Sarge.

I was just napping by the meteor,

that’s all.  It rolled away

(under the elements, maybe).

Not Hobo, not Pope... Columbus, neither.

Those deep brown hazel eyes absorb

Persephone-phenomena...

monarchs on milkweed... ah,

she weeps.  Who spans her glistening orb?

7.7.17

to the Open Road

PINE-SAP

Hobo took to the Open Road,

from Minneapolis

to ancient Providence.

Like Mark Baumer, or Johnny Appleseed

or Pippin, off the deck of Pequod

unto lustrous ebony

of kings (their feathery

full fathom five... old sacred wood).

Gray tintype of elder Whitman,

stiff lead butterfly perched

on his hand.  We searched

for you, O monarch soul – your Plan

a prairie zigzag into Mexico.

Across the Rio Grande

to feathered-serpent land

pacing a shadow like raven-arrow

(Narragansett shade).  Crumbs

for Elijah-bird, Joachim-

eagle (from the seraphim).

Who plummets (wings like snare drums

thundering).  A way of traveling back

into deep green earth,

Hobo – measure your worth

for cedar berth (from Hackensack

to heavenly Jerusalem).  Transfiguration

chicken shack – here Hen

gathers his brood again

into the spare refectory (Franciscan

                *

cornerstone) where Piero limned

an emerald almond branch

lit by a thread (match-

fuse flaring) like sun-skimmed

honey-milk.  So Hobo burbles home

downstream.  The Gulf beckons.

Blue radiance of suns

(YHWH, YInMn) out of Pacific foam...

& in RI, in San Francisco Bay

orange arcs of rainbow

(mulitocular O-show)

fan skyward Hagia Sophia spark-display.

A yellow-black viceroy wavers

from Petersburg, southwest.

Grave resurrection, chaste

Akme-vision... dark cherry life-savers

Persephone crane-dances

limping to the spring.

Natasha’s creaky swing

for Julietta 484   rusty romances

when we dead shall rise   ghost-dancing

circling into the cloud

of dust   meek now, not proud

Frank Muleteer   Jennifer Sing-Sing

abracadabra... Alcatraz

rock flung from sky

become canoe   your eye

be dew   pine-sap    river to Paradise

5.31.17

in the still life

OKIE CHAIR

In the still life, when the sun goes dark

the absinthe green on the old

wooden door (color of mold

or holm-oak acorn).  In the park

by the lake, the sparse grass wakens

to an April sun;

& you remember someone

battling the ice (forsaken

minstrel-king, nazir).  A buried man.

Some twiggy unknown soldier –

stranded black-gold heir

thread-spun beneath Stalin hardpan.

The butterfly’s a Morpho blue.

Blue as Siberia

in winter, da (selah).

Listen : Quartet 15.  For you,

Nadezhda.  You, Natasha.  Through

& through.  A nature morte

très fort et dur.  Part

rags, part soft shoe, Corporal Goo;

part forever, like Francesco

dropping all his duds.

Back to his father (odds

even he’ll marry her, you know).

There was a war in heaven, in

your heart, your mind.  Jesus

the Rabbi snowballed thus –

blackballed in Memphis – sharkfin

                  *

razor between Hell & Paradise.

They call it history –

a dime store mystery

(Elsie in profile, in an oval vise).

It’s only poetry.  Someone will pay

for it, eventually

(Harry Hawk, maybe –

Our American Cousin).  A splayed play-

stub (Miss Understanding

Under Study) stuck

on a crossbar (Buck

Stops Here).  Eagle Has Landing.

Davy in the Detail.  Film roles

for everyone – all which is

inheres... Macbeth, Cortez....

Universe is empty (full of holes).

Must be that woodpecker, prying

for a worm – the dry mast

puckering (will never last)

to kiss the lightning (scrying

from a crow’s nest now, Cautantowwit).

Whittling toward Arthur Street

in Mendelssohn (complete

symphony to be determined).  Sit

down, Henry, in your Okie chair –

the nave is full of light.

Acorn shines bright.

The Rite (à Paris) is a sweet nightmare.

4.14.17 

Willow River twilight

ANOTHER YULE

Civilization is a natural good.

Valleys are honeycombed

with anthills – tombed

with moral titans (Lincoln would

live up to his Memorial).

Government’s innate,

then – our pleasant fate

to be so compagnevole,

says Alighieri (after Harry

Woodpecker).  D.C.

marbled with majesty

will have a double Jubilee

this year – May 29th (the K

of Camelot’s birthday);

crowds cry hurray

up to the pint of vanishing

& glory glory hallelujah.

I love my country too.

But pride, you know,

leads oft to suicide – King Saul,

alas, fell on his sword, & Henry’s

Clover (sad antithesis

of photosynthesis) was

mortised into concave penury

(her veil of Isis hoovered out

of Iowa).  Her star

twirls like Ishtar

above a Willow River twilight

               *

where gold prairie meets the far

horizon (at the green

mountain, where shriven

penitents climb to the door).

Pride be the world’s blockade.

Banners of orange black

& green (by Jasper Jack)

are complementary, not made

for nought.  Pete? Smoky Pete’s

still lively, though John’s

jotting paper crayons

with encaustic slivers now.  Wheat’s

blonde for Brother Jim’s Great

Purple Hairstreak – what

a butterfly!  Yet

there’s no sketchy moral shortcut

to self-centered celebrations

for a nation, in this world

of woolly worms curled

into cottonwood canyon-

cocoons.  No idle soul-solace

– an oxymoron in

the China cookie tin.

True penitence proceeds apace,

slowly, like Frank’s old shaky mule

inching to San Francisco.

Sorrow made your child go

sailing.  Grief tacks up another Yule.

3.16.17

in Red Wing

JOY-DIALECT

The great apes crouching toward the east

to meet the light

Cautantowwit in flight

southwest, southwest (a raven-feast)

echo the caw-caw over Noah’s ark

(breadcrumbs for Elijah).

The future is for Jonah

or for Jeanne to bear (as oak

from acorn weathers Thunderer,

Earth-Shaker).  From these

enormous clay crocks

of Red Wing pottery (grain elevator,

stoneware casque) one Blue Morpho

or ochre-black Monarch

skims toward blind Psyche-

park (houseboat for mosey-Hobo) –

when Hero rises from the womb

of Nile or Mississippi

like Huck, like Jim (she

will be free!) across the loom

of frozen rim (Troezen or Petersburg).

In Red Wing, Frances Densmore

heard the drums pour

rhythm underneath the river – bug

slant like water spider’s perfect

pitch-black whispering

through tympanum – sing

beyond ice-frame (joy-dialect).

11.1.16 

Frances Densmore exhibit, Goodhue County Historical Society Museum (Red Wing, MN)

Weldon finds his shoes

O FLOWER

                                   For a Tear is an Intellectual Thing

This evening light over the sink

& clutter of Mom’s pots

dish soap, what-nots

stillness of an eye that doesn’t blink

pupil of an unseen commonwealth

Lincoln-logos of a realm

Time cannot overwhelm

where Walter nurses back to health

Hart’s broken farfalla-tower

& Weldon finds his shoes

again   & Berryman his

balance on that bridge   O Flower

Joy   Out of these winter fields

where Bruegel-raven   zig-

zags   over leafless twigs   &

Guillaume’s pink turban   slowly   heals

Your graven images of gravity,

Henry   my autumn fall

1132   a burial

at sea   the perspicacity

of buoyant Jonah   one grey gull 

white-feathered underneath

lights on a wave   breathe,

Dove   lift down from empty skull

my ashen diamond   the snow skims

sparkling   under the sun

& from bright gatherings one

Flamant beams   whose warmth redeems

7.27.16

16

 
Far-off rehearsals of a whippoorwill
send Oblomov into the summer deep.
Yearning's sister is eternity.  The steppe
is brother to the sky.  So still

 
the planet's perihelion : so beaten round
the concave of the heart.  Its cup
so plenished with pleroma-envelope
(reverberant bell-boom of circum-sound).

 
I am but a poor herdsman, a dresser
of sycamore trees, bespeaks Hobo.  The priest
(amazed) beseeches him, leave off, desist!
His plumbline oscillates from nothingness.

 
Its long suspension seals the summer rain;
the swingset's rusty interrogative
repeals its requiem (equable ruth).
A whippoorwill replies.  They will remain.

 
Across the rolling distances, a prairie
butterfly makes delicate, indifferent way.
Zigzagging here and there.  A monarch, say,
or viceroy : his plangent rule a mockery

 
of rule, his slip of flight a sweet retort
to blind and dutiful raison d'état.
He's gentle evanescence, only that -
an evanescent elegance, the earth's éclat. 

 
The sound of the whippoorwill penetrates
the humid summer afternoon.  Late summer,
later afternoon.  Oblomov twists an ear
of wheat between his fingertips.  He waits.

15

 
Dragonfly launches from somnolent lily pad
and joins, with agile grace, the air force
of the world.  Pivoting planes course
unforeseen plateaus (Nature's toolshed

 
multiplied plein air).  Hobo-Oblomov
meanwhile rests his case.  His little file
of origami paper.  Like a pillow-
case, under a drowsy brow.  Off

 
work again, it seems.  Homespun topology
(a gyroscope, in a bottle, in a shipment
of vodka).  Crisp spirit quiescent
holding pattern - Pure Oblomology.

 
Between rest and the forest comes gardening,
George, his friend keeps telling him.  Hobo
looks up from his model Blue Morpho, glancing
across town.  Bottom of the ninth inning,

 
somewhere, he thinks.  Life's a ball game.
Players play, lawyers lawyer, builders
build, mothers mother, poets... ponder,
lapping their papyri into paper flame.

 
The fold was not a simple alternating
crease.  Each step led upward, on a steeper
plane.  Cocoon came first, crimped sheer
to chrysalis.  All in by agitating

 
linked caster-cortèges through a stiff
iron gut, separated from pulchritudinous
hencoop (voltage 715 henrys) (deceased)
by hunched inchworm (butterfly valve). 

I've been doing some shuttling myself today.

6

 
A monarch ambled aimlessly toward Mexico.
Lost in the corn, he knew where he was going.
Knowledge fed humility; he was a gentle king.
There is a cypress where all monarchs go.

 
The cricket schemes a quainter camouflage.
His ordinary droning screed pretends
it cannot penetrate the summer blinds,
short-circuiting the season's slow demise.

 
But we hear differently, upon our swing.
Its iron triangles are Archimedean;
paired parallels ascend into a green
and absent-minded Paradise (creaking).

                  
                 *

 
A swing rocks back and forth, reflectively,
summoning evening summers out of night
and day.  Its governance is just (slight
scraping of the hinges, anyway); see

 
how the old saws of the legal hacks (Coke,
Blackstone) frame up sturdy guarantees
of civil equity : see how proud trees
bend branches to a sigh's brush-stroke.

 
The bookish founders of our liberties
reflecting in their libraries (on Rome,
on London), brooked a necessary home-
truth : let the flower lead the bees.

                         
                                     7.4.06

from the long poem somewhere...

 9
   
                  we never step outside the portals


  
 Now if a six
 turn out to be nine
 I don't mind...
 Let's play pick-up-sticks,

  
 kids – bones.
 Because it's really
 early-late, see.  And
 I'm no yesman

  
 or gnomon –
 I'm a soul man.
 (Not really certain,
 understand...)

  
 Here's the black
 bare cueball.
 Duck.  Rabbit.
 Here's the trick:

  
 square two thumbers
 like so, behind a curtain
 and then wave your ten
 clay beachcombers...

  
 gradually...  See?
 It's a live butterfly!
 It's a handmade moth!
 Will you marry me?

  
 I'm only ten.
 I'm eleven.
 I'm Hen –
 I'm your cousin!

 
                3.28.99

there's a river in Brockton. & flowers in Massachusetts. (listening to the sound)

New England turns her head toward autumn now.
The monarch butterflies are on their way to Mexico.

Mexico & monarch butterflies. Which brings me back to the Russian guy, whose first language was english, born on St. George's Day (April 23). Which brings me back to Pushkin the cat. I'm going in circles.

NY Times today says Monarch butterflies making a comeback from terrible freeze-out in Mexico a year or so ago.

St. Valentine wrote love letters from the prison where he was eventually martyred. Tomb/chrysalis. La condition humaine. Time flowers.

The year I wrote Stubborn Grew, my father's birthday (4.12) fell on Easter Sunday. This is from the 1st sequel (Grassblade Light), toward the center of the book (a chapter called "Ghost Dance"):

30


Spring scent in the nostrils, and in the eyes
a fan of tender buds over the branches. Happy
birthday in the ancient garden. A voice searches
me out, whispers reedy Magdalen. She says:

I spotted a jay guarding the door of the sheep
in a meadow where time does not run and
a crow flies with a knife sharper than
a blade of noon sunlight across the deep

prairie grass. The jay doubled over and wheeled
in a circle like a flowering M or tall amaryllis
or bold forsythia - and soaring toward the apex
of the sky, plummeted - a kingfisher, anchored

in a mirrored lake. Rose then - vermillion-
sheep-clothed - spread both wings wide -
and - for an instant - a pied, rainbow-hued,
flared tepee floated - when with a sudden

reversal of his feathery coat, the quetzal - all
coated and colored over now in earthen clays -
spread her wings again: and monarch butterflies
and grey doves stream from that wide coracle while. . .

I listened as the woman in the garden gradually
marrigated her seedgreen purplescaled hypotenuse
(happily numbering) while my soul rode Blackstone's
white bull slowly toward Oxford on my father's birthday.


4.12.99

[p.s. note for advanced bloggertationists: for riding the bull slowly toward Oxford you should see the closing Finn-Wakean section of Stubborn, where "Akhtemydovie" Akhmatova makes sort of a spring procession toward Oxford (where she received an award in her old age) surrounded by Gould-Herefordshire farmfolk - & then recall that the symmetrical close of book 3 ends on March 5th, as explained below. . .]