light grows lighter

CATLIN WATERCOLOR

Late August light grows lighter.  Wispy

between extended shadows.

The cricket chorus has

a song for this, by Mississippi

banks – that bronze sustaining bass

in parallax of plaintive

high-pitched creel.  I’ve 

got to plead the crickets’ case,

quizzical Hobo mumbles to himself.

What good’s that Easter

Resurrection, if there

be no faery morn, silkworm to elf?

That is, no general coming back

to life... old Yeats’s sense

of unquenchable experience?

Manitou pipes at Fond du Lac...

as in a Catlin watercolor

along shores of Great River

life-lines   etched forever

in raven-ink barge Seine-trawler

or in a summer garden   with Apollinaire

our flimsy smoke lifting above

rooftops   & fading   eve of

war   Christ the Pilot in the air

over our heads   the gentle hero

retiring into poplar-voice

grey Hobo   warbling rejoice

inscrutable Holy Wisdom   flutters near

8.25.17

tricksters in the cricket cities

PATCHWORK SHEPHERD

The river sweeps by the bent cottonwoods

toward autumn.  Time

& history resolve to rim

their force into a wave, a wheel.  The goods

bob & drift downstream, with the detritus –

the tomb of Alighieri

& the other desperadi

all the tricksters in the cricket cities (Paris,

Petersburg, St. Paul) fiddling their gusli

merge into a chord

like an infant beechwood

or broken font in Florence – one little tree

of plumb transfigurement, beneath

the arms of a patchwork shepherd

(Sant’ Apollinaire).  One almond

word melds stars into a wreath

to crown that brow (who is Liberty) –

she mutters... You who incite

fools to violence, who delight

in murder & grief, know not Me;

you who terrorize your spouse, & oppress

your neighbor, know not Me;

the blind man can see

what you cannot see, the deaf woman hears

what you cannot hear, the 4-year-old child

knows Me better than you.

So the little tree (a beech, a yew)

marked X the spot (where Psyche smiled).

8.30.16

Indomitable busker

It's a mystery to me (a mystery for which I'm grateful) how these long pilgrimage-de-Henri sagas adjust themselves to my own contingencies.  They round themselves up in their own good time.  We are told art is practice practice practice, & maybe that's what it is.  "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will" (Hamlet).

For example : I'm moving to Minnesota in a matter of days.  It's been a roller-coaster year, yet this Ravenna Diagram thingum has persisted, kept on keepin' on.  Now - a few days before we leave, & in the midst of much pack-up anxious biz - the fourth chapter of the poem, and a big structural cornice, draws to a close, seemingly in a fairly-fitting fashion (how can I know).

I'm thankful for the poem time.  I'm thankful for the moonshine of this little Ocean State.

EARTHY TAVERN

This polished late October light.

Burnishes each diamond

of the backyard iron

fence.  One survivor-cricket

churrs behind spruce (indomitable

busker).  Over the rail

a wave of clematis still

surfs; the massive parasol

of luminous russet dogwood leaves

still braces (on its sturdy

mast) against a gusty

autumn breeze.  Halloween in the eaves.

I’m leaving very soon.  The golden

spider packs his poison-

bag, curls (frozen)

in a thread-vortex.  I be beholden

to my Ariadne.  In her hazel eye

the gold lambswool, yellow

Corn Maid poncho flow

into one clay design – pendentive sigh

of wild oats panicle (brown

dangling bird-feet

elegant & neat

as many-rimmed Ravenna urn).

My host is flown.  Like Stella Maris

over the ridge, at Swan

Point – pivoting on équinoxe

de printemps (April 12 it was

                    *

this year)... like Beatrice’s Florence,

born le 4 Juillet – or taut

Francesca, by her net

of Inca wool... ou sont les neiges,

maintenant?  They’ll ride my splintered

coracle back home.

Or (gone threadbare) roam

my prairie west – O mulish cowherd

wind-wag, tickled to Frisco Bay!

Morning Star, look homeward

kind upon yon way-weird

son.  Apollinaire, with calumet...

the wars is over, anyway

– wars in my old heart.

Ravenna’s where we start

again (light brdftprnt of Dante).

Motif of a sacrifice.

Eternity turned

ice-cold (solid,

absolute).  Not nice –

unless you reckon yet again.

The dogwood mast is creaking

in the slanting afternoon;

winter will be coming soon

for Hen, who gathers everyone

into his earthy tavern

(like a Grecian urn)

across far distances... (American).

10.23.15

dogwood (& spruce) on Fisher St.

12


 
I heard some crickets planted here and there
in a wayside meadow.  Lying on my back
in the shade of an iron pier, where tracks
of the Soo Line leapt a moody river.


 
You might recall, too.  I start to remember
something familiar (half-gone memory)
whenever I notice the crickets' skree, skree.
It penetrates, easily, adamant layers


 
of daydreams (vague, swollen, viscous, slow).
So time attempts a mask of gravity,
unsheathes its blade : mirrored peripety
(grave) revolving to a tune the crickets know.

                                               
                 *


 
The echo of the railroad's ruthlessness
blends like thunder into thirsty plains.
An overarching, regal blue remains -
an edict in the heart (its hollowness).


 
Relinquish them (the pride, the contumely)
the way a peevish king divests his crown.
Yon imperturbable (unplumbed, unknown)
shuffles the weights, invents a remedy.


 
And the wind trestles the urgent stream.
And the formidable iron swingset
restates its formula, in triplicate :
back, forth, back, forth (life, dream).