Tran-Van-Tay

NILE ROSE

                          for Tran-Van-Tay (i.m. Joseph Duemer)

The pomegranates on white linen

loom like autumn leaves.

A red that fades, grieves...

yet glows out of its midnight background

blue.  Like a chokecherry, or

some other berry, man.

Viet-American

(another long-gone war).

We were on honeymoon, in Paris.

Aphrodisiac,

that dried-up sack

of seeds (maroon, vermilion).  Osiris –

will he climb out of the grave again?

The grave of gravity

(1132 ft/sec) – for me?

One catenary arc (trompette marine)

– one thread cut from the labyrinth

of frightened Minotaur

(mother-nightmare).

One Ariadne-clue, one length

of yarn, your sheepish hermitage;

C-magnet of the knot-

king’s smoking calumet –

curled fringe of Jonah’s whale-image.

Out of the sea, the rudder swam.

Rhode Island... oaken

wisdom’s perihelion.

Rose Nile, set sail for gentle Vietnam.

10.10.18

the ordinary Union

KNIT WOOL

                 Eternity, O Eternity! That is our business.

                                                       – Roger Williams

She watches crows play in the sky

above her balcony.

Her dregs of memory

transmute to gaiety, give death the lie.

Cautantowwit was Raven-Lord

of Narragansetts.  Old

Canonicus told

Roger how dead souls were borne toward

Mexico, far off southwest...

Rog quilled it down.

That chief of great renown

was kind to him.  Knit wool is best

around head, limbs & heart

when winter ice descends.

I’m dreaming, friends.

One campfire (circling) is all my art.

The Red Wing river-clay is heavy,

as my mother knows.

O the harsh blows

that fall like thunder (Romeo, Julie)...

The body’s weight is catenary

Golden Gate (so

Jasper shows).  Blow,

Manitou... bring back the glory

of the ordinary Union.  It shall be

– when we return to Thee,

from sea to shining sea –

uncommon good (benevolent Eternity).

11.29.17

thy brother calls thee

CATENARY TED

The cosmos hangs from a thread, a

lifeline.  Yes, Flem

was with us, up at Verm –

helped Dad, me & Jim (brother)

dig the cabin foundation.  Flem’s

father was MN State

Epidemiologist;

Flem died of AIDS.  There are these themes,

signs... the padre of Hart Crane,

manufacturing Life-Savers...

Abraham with scimitar

squeakin’ by with a warning... O Cain,

thy brother calls thee from the ground.

Hobo sleeps by the river;

his thyrsus nods, a glimmer

of August grass.  Mullein, dock... diamond

pine-cone (piñata by the Po).  The tree,

the tall cedar of life,

Malcolm!  She’s your wife,

you know.  Nehushtana of Liberty.

Evergreen, year-round.  The shadow

owl knows (lives there) –

Spinoza cave-winds tear

up the forgery of terror (low

blow put into Vladimir Kiev-doom).

I’m singin’ with the stars,

Flem, Jim – after the wars.

Mr. Catenary Ted bojangles home.

8.31.16

On the blue horizon line

SIMPLE PROW

You see a cat stripe-shadowed

by the slats of a fence.

One of those incidents

from Mendelssohn, out of childhood

infinity... flicker of memory.

Today.  Mid-April air

and sunlight.  Barely there –

a plainness of weathered cedar, sea-

bells.  Sea-salt.  Far away

two splendor-pillars

mark the Gate of years

& gravity – shine, wave goodbye...

& on the blue horizon line

mother & father join

two hands (bright axle-sign

– a double-axe) under the sun.

Man & Woman, O (M-W)...

Come forth, my son,

my daughter, only one –

Time & Space unfold in You.

The mysterious heir of heaven

danced a masque before

Magdalen’s cave-door –

mothering the grainy leaven,

heavy loom of Here & Now.

Under faded barn slats,

hidden in straw, the cat’s

prowling a kingdom’s simple prow.

4.15.16

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

Saarinen synchronicity

Just 11 days shy of 11 months ago, in mid-December 2008, I began writing this long poem Lanthanum, which originated in an odd dream I had had a few days before, about the Gateway Arch monument in St. Louis (something I'd never seen, nor thought about previously).

On Monday, I finished the first book of Lanthanum (1st of a projected 3 volumes). Today I self-published it via Lulu (see previous post). & when I got home from work, & stretched out on the couch, & opened the NY Times... there was an article about a new exhibit at the City Museum of NY : on Eero Saarinen (architect of the Gateway Arch).



The gateway monument, by the way, is in the form of a "catenary arc" - the shape a flexible string or line makes when hung upside-down. Jasper Johns has painted a whole series of works incorporating the catenary arc.