signum of yearning

DOOM-BELL

The simple poem sets its seal on the day

(signum of yearning, lack

& bronze heartbreak).

It doesn’t create, but confirms, I say –

tacit equipoise of universe,

with roaring hearth

mirroring each heart

in Milky Way (our fiery nurse).

& of that translucent softest koinonia

the poem’s just a line.

Graven tattoo or riverine

El (whorled conscience of Columbia).

So when the Rabbi hums a restoration of all things

we understand what he means

& feel it in our bones –

sunlight in the kitchen supersedes all kings.

Liberty-tyranny-liberty; light-dark-light...

your Florentine chessboard

migrates its word-hoard

to Skye, & beyond (stern Ocean slate).

Your buoy rides the moiling salt

like a lucky pawn

become kingpin again;

Hamlet swings the doom-bell... halt,

who goes there? – solo Ophelia

hoovers up all Denmark

from her West Branch park,

& Evening Star glows like Astraea.

12.9.19

Ravenna Diagram Reading Guide #4

This be the next entry in Ravenna Diagram reading notes for Susan Brown.  Inquire here for more info....

R.D. READING NOTES #4

COLD SPRING (p.6)

Poem full of obscurities.  Stanzas 1 & 2 : we are back in northern MN winter landscape.  Raven/Ravenna.  Shakespeare’s “treble-dated crow” (Phoenix & Turtle) – which, according to legend,  engenders offspring by breathing – is flying back and forth.

“scrawny schemer.... Signature / of Cain-torn soil”  :  slight mingling of Biblical and Native American legends.  Raven, along with Bluejay, appears in some Trickster stories.

“something resolute... smoke-dispute” : a basic philosophical debate – what is Death?  What is Life?

“dissipating ghost-limb, drifting / wake” : allusion to parallels between 19th-cent. Ghost Dance movement and Christian doctrines of Resurrection

“morse code... remorse” : sound echo with Latin mors, death

“chancy chancery... So choose” : the actuality of death, its duel or chess game with life, motivates the moral conscience – what shall I choose to do, how shall I live, in the face of mortality?

“Only way / is up, replies the smoke” : affinity between ghost, or spirit, and smoke – the “morse code” of Native Am. smoke-signals (& peace pipes)

“raven-laughter (hoarse / sneers)” : the suggestion behind this poem’s folktale dialectic is of something beyond cynicism or fatalism

banquet at the end of time

PUSHKIN MOVE

The banquet at the end of time,

the invitation read –

the living & the dead

to celebrate.  This pantomime

of solemn feasting they perform

beneath cavernous timbers

(burnt resinous embers)

foreshadows that preternatural storm

of joy, tasting our expectation –

when Eli’s empty chair

so hopeful (floating there)

is overflowing with affection

once again.  As we well know,

observes bright Magdalen –

beseeching, in the garden,

gardener (raw moon of woe).

& what it all may mean for Hobo

Hank, lazing out

his salvation-boat

conundrum (Solipsism, ho!)...

Can it be can-do canoe?

If anyone thinks they

know anything (See

St. Paul!) they’re in Pig’s Eye

sez he.  My inconsequence

is like a Pushkin move;

chess is like love,

government... clear as Providence.

9.16.18

flesh-tone bridge

MAZY CHARTER

The wistful twirling of a yellow leaf

falling from a book of leaves

by the big river.  Waves

of leaves, infinite beyond belief

slanting down through a universe

beyond fall’s azure,

through its perfect mirror

of ineffable air.  The woodpecker’s

not waxwing, but a twin-bird –

matching Thunderbird

like third wing, or word

thing – in Red Wing, we’ve heard.

& they’ve buffed the naked concrete

of the Franklin Bridge

to warm flesh-tone (Wedge

whistling to Jay : almost complete,

they say).  Like hands arching across

the tingling serpent below

someone signals so –

right, all right.  The frail cosmos

is built of moss & dogwood leaves;

made like a dream-song

on a thread so long

from inner lining of young Osip-sleeves.

Hid in a nightfall of Apollon-wrath.

The child-heart trembles

when the chief dissembles –

ice winking in the barrel underneath

                   *

encompassing a land in shambles,

wasted by Behemoth

& Metheboss (cloth-

of-gold twin skimlords, crashing cymbals).

El-Moloch asked for the heart of your son.

For your son the king,

the bloom of everything –

Aztec football in place of the sun.

Apotropaic sign or mirror-pharmakon,

the murmured word of love

becomes a catcher’s glove –

inside-out Osip net (for rescuing someone).

You search the scryptics, yet you

do not come to Me.

Gold almond cider, see?

Where Mendelssohn defeats Deep Blue.

She’s by your side, a kelson, smiling,

spinnaker through gray wall

of seamless cloud – whale

of light fog, swallowing Jonah – a ring

of stone, becoming breathing feathers

for a child of Ocean River,

borne downstream from Neva-

Neva-Heavenland (all-planetary weathers).

Her green eye walks through doors, through gates.

That crossroad in the mirror

overwhelms birth-terror –

seals mazy charter (Liberty checkmates).

9.28.17

in the conning tower

SALT PATTERN

Sophie sketching a choo-choo train

in blue crayon, & a trio

of engines in bright yellow-

black (Union Pacific) planing

across a dented overpass

share the light matrix-

argot of a peacock’s

fan-continuum (sea-surface).

Your eye that opens like a morning

glory forged into fusion

stronger than the sun

this amorous union, splendoring

a plume – your planet, raveled into

one.  Its gyroscopic

spin is geodesic

liftruweight – a feathery canoe

scaled up the hoary Nile to be

fair, kind & true

(peacock’s mosaic view

breathing accordion transparency).

Who then can be my enemy?

Why do the ogres rage

& tinpots ruse to stage

mock war upon me?  Jealousy?

from lambent arboreal North

snow slants softly down

a rose meridian

to blanket aboriginal South

                *

radiant in sibylline East

as tawny dogwood leaf

light welds a choral reef

to Liberty’s gull-dappled West

A shady chess piece in the tower

angles shark advantage

with a flanking edge –

the twisted blade, the bribe’s power;

on prison railroads to the pole

pecking iron grain

by long division

sowing lizard’s teeth (drum roll)

all for a subterfuge of thieves

who plant not (neither

shall they hive)... where

then their homing in the sheaves?

Like a black hole torn through

ice-gilded armor, light

gravity sets right

your kayak’s calm ellipse (true

almond eye, beaming beyond

all scheming pyramids).

Whose birchbark lids

one cosmic hexagon – fond

snowflake angel-star – salt

pattern at the end

of Everychild’s roadbend –

bright rainbow out of Ocean vault.

1.13.17

stranger in the land

WELDED KEYS

The old words climb from the well of time

like a Norway spruce,

aquamarine – set loose

like fiery needles from the flame

of Psyche-Liberty (breaching

Columbia, rose-grey

dauphin).  Light spray

from Ocean’s breathing-hole – the sting

of Cuban salt.  Strange emissary,

stranger in the land,

your phantom clock-hand

gravitates toward Harper’s Ferry –

ticks back, between slate gray

clouds, the frozen sword

over its chessboard hoard

(gold poison-cup, primed to betray

the Union).  Carlsen’s hesitation

in hamlet-limping lines

of Sabbath silence... Martin’s

magnanimous memory... the unknown

veteran, shrouding a still-life

Lincoln penny (pinned

atop his heart).  Sound

heard in Ramah... Rachel’s life-

saver, bobbing Caribbean blues.

Queequeg on welded keys

surfacing velocities

Atlantis-radiant... bright jasper hues.

12.1.16

                          "Reminiscences of 1865", by John F. Peto (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

implicate my speech

IRMA’S FLING

Sly Raven implicates my speech

with folded shade.  A bright

dove spangles dew-light

drifting the stream.  On the beach

by Mississippi, one yellow-black ensign

of cottonwood, one limestone

arrowhead.  An unknown

bird hums wings into a grey spine-

feather matrix – hovers droning

like yellow gyroscope

(totem for sun).  Hope

is the thing... the Word spins honing

like a drill toward a red diamond,

flaking hieroglyphs

& copper cypress skiffs

for one crossroad encounter (bond

of your voice, speaking soft to me,

from vise of mine).  Zone

of Mendelssohn tombstone –

of flint, cracked open for humanity –

to pour through like sprung torrent

& never cease flowing,

as when a raven crowing

from an empty cave (craven, abhorrent)

signals a seed flung by a planet’s wing –

smiles through the sea-gate

like Peacock Angel – fate

spannered by a checkmate (Irma’s Fling).

8.2.16

each poem starts fresh

TROMPETTE MARINE

Soft breeze moves the cucumber leaves

climbing the fine mesh.

Each poem starts fresh

upon a labyrinth the wind conceives

the way Dante struggled like a goat

to rise above the black-

white chessboard (epileptic

knight, squirming from Hell’s dank moat

toward one firefly-mote of light).

O civil wars of cousin

wolves!  Striving in frozen

latitudes of predatory fright-

might, ice-blue treason – all

spite-pirates of the broken

sheep of state – forsaken-

&-forsaking sacrifice!  Ravel

me then, Ariadne, in your primordial

& woolen salience

of J... into the silence

of a pregnant Jubilee, where Piero’s wall

glows in the morning light (& swells

a womb within a cave).

Search the high nave

of the Milky Way – Francesca dwells

up there (with Jenny Littletree) – among

the Shaker Indians, Quakers –

meek paisans, peacemakers –

fused by trompette marine of song.

8.1.16

Chess problem

REED MAT

Husks of cicadas, limestone shells.

These layers, a palimpsest

of leopard skins (East/

West).  Serpentine spells

(Alph to Yezidi).  In graven

hieroglyphs of human

dream – Solomon

& Shulamith (Ferrarese garden

bond).  A Mendelssohn mandala-

afterlife, of local

equilibria... after all

the Pharaohs have their sway (selah).

Battle of shade & pictograph

resolved by wind.  Cool

breeze, troubling pool

of sunken barge (regal riff-raff).

Vernacular archaic culture

architecture – simple

transmission of ample

gratitude for being.  Pressure

on the king (of everything).

Grey humming bird

omen signals absurd

sacrifice (pawn for nothing)...

his baby steps (Gypsy to Jew)

toward one wooden

nature morte (amen,

amen).  Reed mat, sheik.  Me & you.

1.23.16

Quiet river scenes

Some of the chords in this little 2-finger exercise (for Ravenna Diagram) came from a recent article in the New York Times about the Yulong River in China.

LITTLE STEPS

Halcyon late summer day

in the ancient yard.

Soft came the word

from kayak lips... like one stray

Chinese lantern, swinging orange

over weedy greens.

Quiet river scenes –

Yulong threading bamboo (drafty ange

d’or fisherman) between karst hills

& water buffalo –

bull’s-eye, ground zero

for the monsoon spring.  God wills

fish from such limestone streams.

The way to Promised Land runs

through your heart, O branded

Everyman.  Job’s hook redeems.

A living soul talks back to hieroglyphs

until they come to life. 

Osiris in the loosestrife

with French polio – Ravenna stiffs

in sketchy skiffs, rafting a mossy

Giuliana to her sunny

son – sweet honey

from a shack smokehole, in Galilee.

You won’t get it right away.

The flags are thick

with gold encaustic –

targets flip like livid hay

in a tornado eye – the limp

thread hangs from one

thread or another in

a Mandan sundance.  Nails crimp

crumpled limbs beneath a cloud

of starlings... when one

raven, crowing, spun

through your aching pupil – proud

oculus of Solomon,

Galla’s ripe acorn

crown of sylvan

horn – an evergreen

Ravenna Pinetop, skipping 88s around

your retina.  The iris

in her sheaf of cornea is

larval now – pupa plummets down

octagonal, folded to ground –

Hero in milkweed,

featherweight... freed

fiddlehead wing, cedar-bound.

The mountain lurks above the trees.

Imago flies to her source.

Monarch wafts a deft Morse

code in air – needles sing breeze.

A message-smudge, still incomplete,

yet untranslated.

Fisher King... checkmated?

Will fly again lambchild.  Beat?

Through bearskin smokehole, near

the North Pole, Glenn

plays baby Bach again –

so grand, these little steps!  So dear.

9.17.15

A Game of Chess

MACAU MACAW

Another eleventh (August this time)

on brick-silly wasteland of

one shady summer patio.  Well

of hurry-up peas... bee-balm...

Joe-Pye weed... & yet this elfin

flower-team backyard

is not exempt.  The hard

news (frenzied shrunken headlines)

bearbaits me too.  From River Alph

to Yezidi desert, innocent

Peacock Angels get bent

down again.  The gibbering gulf

twixt glib libel & Guelf remains kiln-set

in demosthenic night.  Rainbows

of violets against violence? – how

coin bowl for Guinea-worm alphabet?

Sketches of Spain... Spanish Castle

Magic.  Convivial Jorge

the Gardenia been draggin’

me, all over.  Plays chess, too.

Iris, sez I, is a yurt-mother.

King’s taken baby steps

between crooks, bishops...

Q’s unreadable.  & here’s another

pawn to put in (yawning spacesuit).

A pair of carpenter asps

of the caduceus, Jasper –

dove from the deep.  Shalom (checkmate).

8.11.14