only piano in town

CLAY BARN

6-yr-old Sophie curls up in the lap

of grumpy old Grandpa

to listen to Grandma 

read us the story of Jingle Bells.  Slap-

happy Mr. Pierpont, of Medford Mass.

watching 12 skating sliders

skim frozen circles (laughter’s

elves) runs next door to Mrs. Waterman’s

– only piano in town, to test his melody

& the rest is history

she’s ready for bed, isn’t she

Sophie’s growing up fast, Henry

The tall Norway pine at the prow

of the duplex, like a mast

climbing up toward one vast

frosty galaxy, with its Xmas lights in tow

(Grandpa’s dad’s project once, long ago)

they don’t glow anymore

but the duplex lies at anchor

like every ark, Egyptian barge, Ferrara canoe

like every nave, like every churnagogue,

like every Celtic coracle –

round as a 4-leaf miracle

of Columba, or Mayflower Compact (ship’s log

of covenanted sheep’s union);

round as lightswept dome

of Hagia Sophia, or home

sweet home (clay barn, Mississippian)

12.16.19

small icon, a gift of Elena Shvarts, poet of St. Petersburg

bridges of Hennepin County

PROOF-STONE

So many bridges flung across this river

like stitches on a wound –

their heavy iron-concrete bond

knitting a wintry Twin Cities together.

One thing is welded to another,

like the almond in a Venn

design – Cahokian

canoe of koinonia? – out of mother-

clay, spun wide... like risen bread,

or galaxies of diamond fire.

So lights flash over limestone

mire, through night-black thunderhead.

& Hobo, hunched beside the riverbank

is like the shadow of Henry

as Henry is of lowly

Galilean king (his incognito prank)

– as are we all, in that high diagram

checkering light across a dome

in old Egyptian Byzantium

(proof-stone of perpendicular wisdom).

Like Hagia Sophia with a million eyes...

rimming the twin-bent boughs

of swelling arcs (in Voronezh)

where East & West, mud-rings & skies

are melded in your almond lips’ ellipse

& God & Imago

& world & Churnagogue

are sanctified, sealed with a kiss

of peace (pax, agape – Wakan Tanka);

where Rio del Espiritu Santo

whispers I love you so

& Hobo walks with sister Joan (Columbia).

12.3.19

season of myths

AUDACIOUS FRIGATE

Yearnful melancholy Hobo ambles

through the cool autumn air

beside his ancient river.

The stately ship is in shambles –

audacious frigate, Ironsides;

the man of lawlessness

fills sails with loopholes,

fraud & force cloaked in bromides.

The mellow colors by the Mississippi

figure a buoyant hearth

where a woman might give birth

amid flame-tongues of domesticity –

like these nests of bold maple leaves

mingled with cadaverous hearts

of cottonwoods (Hart’s

premonition, Berryman’s Osiris sheaves).

& Henry, patiently delving like a wasp

through its oak-apple shell

or a worm through the skull

of a defunct Lear, will suddenly gasp

like an infant breathing her first air –

where oak-leaves chitter

beneath Roundhead October;

a restoration from crypt-keeper’s lair.

Hobo, following the copper shoreline

bends toward St. Louis

& his bark of Jessie, O.

Light churnagogue (twin trees becoming one).

10.16.19

fireball parody

META-BRIDGE

October Indian summer weather;

delicate red hands

of sumac & maple pause

suspended, swing through clear air.

A white paddlewheeler like a ghost

glides upstream out of

Lethe – like a church dove

burbling an emerald paternost,

a moody coracle out of Iona.

Who is the master here,

O mini Man o’Tar?

Whose maze is this, Grandma?

Nile Voodoo Queen seeks her Osiris

at the snaky rainbow mouth; &

Henry Churnagogue steams south

to find his figurehead (Columbia’s

Joanna-genesis, out of impoverished

Franciscan waters).  These two

reflect each other – so

your spring-coiled safety net’s accomplished.

So when that fireball parody of Icarus

– no guidance system – lands

a direct hit on Ireland’s

intricate dear vessel (Ick-R-Us?

Ich bin ein Russki, then?) our meta-bridge

of bridges, our Iris beyond 

all arks, will respond –

braiding a human chain of love & courage.

10.8.19

driving around Kenwood

BLUE CLAY

Driving around Kenwood, the memories.

In the mist.  October

leaves me almost sober

(maples blushing maroon, umber).  The bees

have mostly flown to sleep (in the calyx

of a sunflower).  You’ll find

soft traces of the mind

in whorls of thumbprints – Red Wing phoenix

lifted out of blue clay & industrial (okay

now what?).  Zone of quiet

emotional measurement.  Whit-

mind, informing each & all.  Today

the Mississippi is a feathered serpent,

mirror of oak & maple,

cottonwood.  Oak-apple

galls the rotund roundhead tyrant –

harboring the charismatic prince

whose mother & bride is

Espiritu Santo, Sophia’s

father & son (green acorn salience).

The canoe downstream is almost invisible

like a pair of wooden lips

whispering across the gaps –

a miniature ark, whose rainbow burble

bubbles back her own Churnagogue wake;

she is the radiant candle

glowing through the cupped hand,

the clay grail mending each American mistake.

10.7.19

to shade the children from the burning sun

my Hobo Code coffee cup

WAVE-THRUMS

I’m coming to the crown of the river-tree

& the mouth of the copper serpent

following Hobo, where she bent

toward the Delta of American poetry.

& there’ll be singing & dancing, each clown 

hootin’-&-a-hollerin’

& dressed up like an Indian

to celebrate the simple joy of Union.

& I’ll trail behind Benjamin Latrobe

the good mason of Washington

taking after his dear son

to build a floating city from mosquito-glob;

I’ll watch that Phoenix-bird arise

like an evening Jonah,

spreading her ghost-persona

wings from Frisco Bay to Providence

to shade the children from the burning sun

& fly them to a new playground

where wave-thrums sound

their steady oceanic Truth for everyone

whose eyes merge in the Sophie-bark

curving over the Churnagogue

(octagonal pine-log

hover-canoe; dynamic-ceramic arc

empowered by the muscled wheel

of hopeful human clay)

– J-stroking toward an Agape

aflow to share, to guide, to lift, to heal.

8.20.19

whispers out of Colchis

painting by Michael Gould (acrylic and Elmer's Glue)

MILKY DOME

Henry hearkened to the dream song hum

along the stairwell of a crane

bone flute.  The black mane

of Mama Miriam Dodona waved to him.

As if a little tree anchored his coracle;

a branch of whispers out of Colchis,

woolen silky-shroud of Maximus –

his golden fleece a minor miracle

where twin wheels mesh to form one

almond (of almonds).  Mighty

mickle canoe, whose Isis-eye

looks from the prow (tease of the sun).

There is a vortex in the Black Sea

where the Great Year pivots –

Hamlet churns through his regrets

there, until Milky Way whorls like a G.

There is a grail of emerald stone

beckons from the bottom

of the sea.  Four rivers stream

out of a matrix there – exalted zone

of moody CHURNAGOGUE – the potter’s

center & circumference;

Ferrara ghetto-sense

mingled with Dante-radiance (all hers).

& the backward Nile flows down to Memphis

where the martyr at the bleak hotel

sipped from her cup, & cancelled Hell –

his milky dome hoisted to foamy wisdom-bliss.

8.8.19

heights & depths

LOVE LEADS

In the phosphorus dwelling-place of the Most High

Dante, murmured Hobo

will I be able to hear

that melancholy train-horn cry

so-so long gone?  His pal Henry

felt that ol’ pulsing flame

of lonesombrero, becomin’

churnagogue (centripetal clay) –

that emerald lichen-moss of Giuliana,

flanking a time-hewn sepulcher

with it still whorl

of tesseratic Emperors & Empresses... ah

Psyche, from those regions which

are Holy-Land!  Smoky

incense signals eye-

in-hand, Galla (yon casket-niche).

The soul is feminine.  The turbulent

churnagogue is melting

galaxies, in buttermilk –

hamlets of sacred discontent;

YHWH, detached from patriarchal kings

unveils a weird Coatlicue-

possessed & epileptic Dante-

muse... Venusian fire – & Jonah sings

Love leads us up like moth to flame

from steel-train Iron Range

down to Delta... strange

diamond, Latrobe (El MLK mandala-frame).

7.29.19