on long feet

LIGHT RABBI

Calm evening at the end of April.

Wisdom of the ancients –

unity of changing constants.

A continuum… a synthesis… a will

to find a meaning in the whole;

a portion of instinctive

gratitude – the urge to live

unfolding origami in the soul.

We dwell beneath an aegis of benevolent ideas

like clouds (reflecting sunlight,

bringing rain).  & everything

will be all right, my father said – his palm

over my flooding eyes.  This the providence

of sparrows & tall kings –

of all those feathered things

that soar so bravely into turbulence.

So then… who’s your imaginary friend,

Henry?  That loony Hobo

drifting from his local slough

down to the Gulf of Mexico?  Just a bend

in the river?  See thou, Hart says

– touches a key, perhaps.

After the world-collapse

he’ll still be burbling his sabbath-sense;

planting a tender middle C

between Ocean & me

where clay & sea

are cleft at last, to rescue Thee 

                *

– the clé to my ecclesia, Julie – 

a soft glissando pour l’église

from San Francisco to Louise

(grey Dolphy surfacing beside me).

& if reality is simply a supremely poetic idea

then the Imago of images

is like a seed of peacefulness –

a still point (painted on a bowl in Cahokia)

or that eye-in-hand Hobo held out to me

the wad of river-mud

Rabbi patterns for the blind

saying, Ephphatha… (gently, gently).

Everything has already been redeemed

& an orb rests in Hobo’s eye

with dewfall of memory

& earth-pangs for the not-yet-dreamed.

Everything rising with the soeur-coulombe

the sister-dove, the Jonah-Joan

the twin, O my beloved one

light Rabbi hopping through the gloom

on long feet   heading for the nest

on crest of wave

that vertical canoe-nave

pronged   at heart of Southern Cross

6 tracks of Black Elk diamond

ghost dance of Rio del

Espiritu   sprung up

for you & me   out of dis April pond

4.30.20

speaking the poetry of dense & difficult

GOLDFINCH APTITUDE

In the late afternoon, old Emperor

Henry the Ghoul lies abed

beneath the wallpaper’s red

roses (spread by his late father

for his mother).  The sun is not a god

nor is his Uncle Ez,

despite the pitchmen on the rez.

Frayed tribes will not succumb; Benito’s rod

is not benign, nor ever shall be.

The motorized dream, from

vortex of survivor-shame

after the panoramic slaughter-sea

of Ypres, Somme, & Meuse-Argonne –

like a neoplatonic fantasy

of utopian autocracy,

with phantom Isis Medusa-icon

wailing like siren out of Empyrean

over the shattered spectacle

of your culture-chronicle,

Ezra – so who shall have the succession?

The special providence of a sparrow...

the goldfinch aptitude

for simple gratitude.

& when the Eternal comes, you will know,

Osip (along the axis of the earth).

The covenant of love

donated from above

for good – so we might share it forth.

4.29.19

cottonwood sky

BIG DIVE

In the steep ravine shading the river

Hobo’s eyes follow

smooth limbs upward, so –

into a cloud of silver-green shimmer,

Columbian sky-nest

of cottonwoods.  His squint

moseys like scattered flint –

mishmash out of Ocean states

into some kind of Land o’ Lakes

matryoshka doll, or Land 

o’ Goshen Big Rock Candy

Mountain.  The poet is a sacred

fool (or cataleptic converter)

& every shepherd’s an

effete abomination,

just a bump under a bumpkin tower.

Hobo keeps an eye on Henry,

ambling up there

on River Road.  Air-

head royale, full of acorn honey,

soldering his Goshen stone

into a manic-hollered

coat of caustic red

Rhode Island rooster-throne –

a sharpened archaic Goshen point

left at Minnehaha

Falls by some Ojibwa

dream-boat.  The time is out of joint

                *

he cries, with a Norwegian accent –

O Jessie, O Ophelia,

my little tree, Columbia!

Come tripping back unto the oak tent

once again, out of the Ocean foam!

Flip your big dive, big Dove,

into reverse – for love

of Yahweh, & of Manitou, & home

sweet home!  An infinite Intelligence

invisible as air,

kind as mon cher

Francesco, wise as Providence,

clear as the sky vaulting these gray

heart-leaves – our octave,

Henry, Hobo... wave

on wave, on wave (lithe sun-ray).

From the standpoint of ineffable Person –

an infinite free Spirit

(older than Cautantowwit,

with all his Raven-wit) – a Someone

omnipresent, serving restoration

to a hurt creation – mercy

exudes like oak-tree honey-

gall.  Some smiling heart-shaped cotton-

wooden crossroad Livingstone –

green-gowned Sophia

traipsing Milky Way-a

Sarabande (one, two, three... one).

6.12.17 

by old Bronze River

PROVIDENCE ROSE

Every day’s a sabbath day

for Hobo in retirement.

He drowses, full content

by old Bronze River (jasper, say –

carnelian, or sard).  On an empty bench

left for Henry once

in Dante’s Providence;

muttering seek ye the good, mensch –

avoid evil.  That would be a start.

The natural conscience

inheres in us; hence

dignity of life abides at heart

like some inalienable hearth-fire,

wants but a spark

to swivel toward magnetic

North (up near Itasca, where

scampers el Baby Rio del Espiritu).

That’s his geography –

some Hart-biography

sketched by the circle of a grey-blue

palm (O Thou smoky Hand

of Fire) – lightening the clouds

with limestone pigeon-crowds

& Jonah-spray... playful Leviathan!

O chaste & ancient liberties

free men & women found

promising iris-ground

out of primordial charities

              *

when Pharaoh was scapegoat too

& idols of the king

morph into Arty-thing

or potsherd red-white-blue

jewel-eye... old Noah’s galley

wakening in Galilee,

when ordinary Mary

hums a grass-green prairie

ray.  The light of Providence

shines out of living things

her omnipresence – springs

on breezy air (moist & immense)

into the metamorphoses

of human times, places –

so many steeplechases

in one race!  Four horses

at Clop-Clop Ellipse rounded

the bend by Hobo’s bench –

each iron bit they clench

forged in a molten sun-crowned

whisper-salience.  Providence

Rose crossed over the line

in first.  Bright human-

divine dervish foot-dance –

key pivoter in clay, O starfish

sun-Leviathan –

O luminous Kid of Man

in cloud-basilica (original Ish).

6.5.17

Rhode Island was purchased by love

RAVENNA PLAYTHING

The last of the autumn thunderstorms

crashes through town,

hail & sleet coming down.

Quick whitecaps fleck the enormous

imperturbable Mississippi flood.

Bridge-work almost done,

the sturdy crane-&-pylon

men climb the sweat-&-blood

iron stairs up to the ridge

just one more time.

Labor is no crime –

titanic force poured to the edge

so that a featherweight robin redbreast

might perch atop a flange

of international orange

and warble good, better, best

into her indigo infinity.

Good will is balance, justice,

equanimity.  Who is

the man untouched by vanity,

cupidity?  I will hold him close

in my heart’s treasury,

for he alone is free.

Not price nor money could have purchased

Rhode Island; Rhode Island was purchased

by love.  Understand, Sophie,

this ocean mystery

of your first scallop-skipping space –

                   *

the star of Rhodos-Liberty

crowned with a ring of palms

sealed with a steady calm

handshake – confirming equity.

Guide of young Roger, ancient

Canonicus – father

& son : the grace to weather

every gale of greed, any fraudulent

unknotting of their pact of peace.

They step like lambkin twins

from a kayak circumference,

an almond eye, figuring Providence;

the planetary hearth of promise

knife-beaked Raven spied

beneath his southwest glide –

Cautantowwit to cedar wilderness

like monarch checkmating to Mexico.

Primordial Ragnarok

& other nightmares lock

the curse into a seeming cul-de-sac – so

your peace which passeth understanding

like a limping child’s sun-

yellow gyroscope, must turn

upright again – Ravenna plaything,

gather us into the river dance

drowning Man’s arrogance –

evergreen presences

surfing Ocean Stream (taut spring romance).

11.28.16

Pines in Atlantis-land

STANDING ROCK

In the powerhouse of Providence

lame little Eddie Poe

must play the game hero –

like a minnow tar, fire-pitted mensch

against Mini-Mini-Tick Leviathan,

his haunt of fearful gravity.

His force is a depravity

of animal instinct – Heraclitean

axis of control – apes’ pecking order,

magnified by policy

(raison d’état, you see).

O too-familiar monster, O – our

puzzle-master, oiled in wrestle-hold,

whose flags flap overhead

above each engineered 

corpse-shed (floods memories untold).

The silver dime, Elsie – your Grecian

Artemis – will not

suffice; this Ariadne-knot

must be released, for peace to reign

the dam must burst; an equilibrium

of equity must level out

the bruised minefield.  Bright

misery in wells of eyes... come,

Maggie Shekinah, come Galilean

Buffalo Gal (Eureka-

Psyche)... Standing Rock

pines in Atlantis-land – rise up again.

9.9.16

let her skip

DAKOTA HEXAGON

This quiet August day toward

the cusp of autumn.  Green

vine-light in the cavern

where Henry hides his raven-word.

That empty chair in Dante’s sky-

deep rose, for all the hoped-

for prophets, emperors...

& here’s Sophia’s little throne (my

dancing-master’s rosy resting-

spot).  Let her skip

fearless across the ship

of state, her toy basilica, questing;

the Greyhound of the Lord, her

vengeance, comes to this –

gray clouds of Providence

replete with rain; a pregnant mother

radiant with clearing day; the shades

of persecution blown away

by ocarinas (clay-

shell turtledoves, dolphin parades).

Ineffable golden Hephaestus-net...

veil of corn fleece over

a West Branch face.  Her

sister in D.C. (Adams duet) –

icon of Miriam & Magdalen,

Dakota hexagon

implicit in the sun

of Washington... cartwheels, Columbian.

8.13.16

like a walnut brain

SKIN-SWIRL

Wide lonesome chord of milk-train horn

across an Osage plain.

Lilac & star, American

crowd... shy bird calling the not-yet-born.

The microcosm of a Maximus

is like a walnut

brained by teeth.  That

worn brown face, in Omaha bus

lounge, spoke quietly.  “I am Dakota.

I’m a man.”  The poem

lifts a sign toward home,

that’s all.  The sum of Ariadne-

maze, malevolent eye of Minotaur

is in the skin-swirl

of your fingerprint.  Roll

back into the vault then, sailor –

shed each blow of monster violence

until you find the mild

eye of the typhoon-child –

immaculate origin of Providence.

I see her hero stepping through the gate

of stone, one hand held out

on a wave of love.  Light

scout, scouring the root of hate –

defanging that lamprey of predatory

malice, hostile cruelty –

injustice clamped on history.

With Coke & Blackstone whispers : Now be free.

6.28.16

India Point, Providence

like waves of the sea

Occasionally I'm going to disobey my own resolution, and post new poems from Ravenna Diagram.  Happy Midsummer Day...

GREEN PILLARS

Spell me the poem including history

if Providence on earth

blooms, Rhodian... Arthur

ever returning, like waves of the sea –

mesmerized & mesmerizing,

in disguise (as George

the gardener).  So merge,

now, emerge, with enterprising

pioneers of happiness, your

boon companions, in

loon-call theremin

borne toward a Lake Superior

of dreams – one cup of fresh water

lifted to the moon

of manna-honey – one

mute field note in the Chronicle of Mutter-

Patter.  A flimsy paper nautilus

skims her light pinnace

over the sea-surface –

her brood chamber full of caprice,

her Ocean State a colony

of Turtledove Cloud-

World.  A dream-word

sang out of a rooted cedar tree –

so old, Time had forgotten her;

so strong, her smile

threads from green pillars

outlasting the Wars to End All War.

6.24.16 

My open road (happy b-day, Walt)

WHEEL-ROSE

Memorial Day.  A good man’s ashes

hid in stone by-way,

two steps from coppery

Minnehaha.  Her long eyelashes

(Florence) his.  Only a mile or so

from viridian jungles

of springtime (Mendelssohn).

His father (Edward) fended the blow

at Saint-Mihiel.  & Katherine,

from Reading – with a red

peony, under a shed

in Belgium.  Only 29.

Red Cross volunteer (unselfish 

clear-eyed gaze).  Poppies

in a man-made sea

of miseries.  The human wish

for Providence is octahedral

diamond.  My open road

is riven motherlode,

adhesive gossamer.  Vein-trail

of cottonwoods, bent by the wind –

a flexible thread of silver-

green, a gusty poplar

grove.  Slight syllables will bind

this dream-sail to a Temeraire

leaving Galilee harbor

(bound for Superior

beneath the wheel-rose of the Bear).

5.31.16

River trail (with cottonwood fluff)

Of Marcel Proust, of Oblomov

TEEMING ORBIT

In the old octagonal gazebo

shaded from sunrays

screened from mosquitoes

I think of Marcel Proust, of Oblomov;

of the haze of tranquil summers

in an equilibrium

of nature.  Let it come.

The books fade into memoirs,

epics filigree life’s borders

with remote heroics

while the housecat licks

his fur, & children play recorders.

To live life on the edge

of the petunia patch.

To bandage every scratch,

wipe every tear...  sea-azure pledge!

Noah’s flute-compass – a pilot’s

Providence – the homing

pigeon’s purple ring

of ocarina nostos-pivots...

Deep down in the teeming orbit

of the clay, a blessed

favor lifts each nested

creature into intricate

brush-feathered limestone – emerald

fresco, where white-

haired eagles congregate –

floresce into the parchment (gold).

5.18.16

One perfect notion

SEEDY OWL

Take this canoe : figure in space

afloat upon time.

Like a Venn diagram

of lapping overlappings, Falcon-Ace –

with the footprint of a sacrifice

like seal of royal doom

(where heavy lilacs bloom).

Beneath lilacs, by Lake of the Isles

I turn back down Memory Aisle...

see shades by willow leaves

in Providence.  Gold sheaves

of lyres, in single evening file –

there’s good gray Edwin, like

a giant beech – there’s Voodoo

Queen of Arkansas (Who-

Who... her seedy owl’s with Mike

now – harps in D.C. laurel branches)...

& Hobo Henry, leaning

back to earth (sing

resurrection, buried man) – launches

out on rolling River of Dreams

(with mazy crane dance

in a prairie trance).

E pluribus unum, Roger Williams...

muttering like young apple leaves

from a root in the grave,

out of lips keen to save.

One perfect notion... (so Hart believes).

5.12.16

Deep lands

Home again in Providence.  Tucked into the old house, with the dogwood & the weedy patio in the backyard, the books upstairs.  I realize after 25 years how much I have become an appendage of this appanage.  I'm part of the local landscape.  May have to leave it soon.

Driving non-mindedly through springtime Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania... wide fields, deep lands, prim farms... trying to keep things going.  The banks of weeds & flocks of trees along the roadside (somebody's Rock Candy Mountain).  The beckoning earth.  (Burchfield's Ohio.)

"Beauty will save the world."  (Dostoevsky)  Reading The Education of Henry Adams.  Adams' quasi-Buddhist passivity.  He understands the futility of late-Darwinian naturalism - yet scrambles around without finding an alternative.

Faith, from the naturalist view, seems an expression of bad faith - a deliberate shuttering of the rational mind.  Mantra for closed eyes.

My whole focus an attempt to justify another view : one which has grown on me over time, prompted by a sort of unconscious prescience, an adolescent St. Vitus' mime of my own future orientation.

The naturalist reads the universe in a context of shock - the shock of recognition of the unknown.  This is the real psycho-cultural after-effect of the development of modern science.  Thanks to the Hubble Telescope et al., we see the universe more immediately, more concretely - an incalculably immense wasteland of burning stars & circling rocks.

The religionist sees the universe as a metaphor, an allegory, a sign.  This kind of seeing is now judged, by the scientific mind, to be the most egregious & central scandal.  It's a kind of evasion, an idealistic feint - as fiction, myth-making.

The poet (arch-Romantic) believes in a vitalist, personal, Reality.  The poem is a document of this faith : a vivid speech, a living voice evoking a living world of living beings.

I can't convince you of what I believe - I can't even enunciate it.  I'm trying, but I fall short.

"Beauty will save the world."  This is Dostoevsky's version of what was once (back in medieval times) understood as "the economy of salvation".  Divine Providence has a plan for the redemption of the earth.

The story of Christ's death & resurrection is a kind of metaphor.  A mystery play.  A symbol, a sign of the "Son of Man" : that is, a representative image of the destiny of the human race as a whole on earth, and of the fortitude of the individual person enmeshed in same.  We die, yet we live again.  We overcome evil through love.  We redeem the earth.  This is "Man's" project here, "Man's" goal.  Joseph Brodsky : "Man was put on this earth for one purpose : to make civilization."  I would revise this formula, however.  Man was put on this earth to discover the love of God (which is really the same thing).

All these phrases of mine are completely useless.  I can't put into words what I really sense & know.

I helped bury my loving, steadfast father last month.  He went into ashes by Minnehaha Creek.  Yet he lives.  He leaves an outline of the Son of Man, a fulfillment of one local corner of the creation, where he shone like a star.

"Ariel was glad he had written his poems..."

"A Tear is an Intellectual Thing,
& a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King."

Beauty will save the world.  There is a harmony to the whole of life which no artist or scientist has been able to express.  It is "grace", it is "love".  It will overcome evil & will make all things new.

It is personal beyond our understanding of the visible person.  It is whispering to you.

Which reminds me of this little poem I wrote about 30 yrs ago :

from a cave

Such a small voice,
I would not stop to hear;
the sun was going down, and
there were no houses near.

Such a strange voice,
whispering out of the ground -
familiar, though it seemed
unearthly, utterly profound.

Such a sweet voice,
twining my cavern ear;
a vine for water jars, when
all the wedding guests are here.

There's a sweetness & humanity in Williams' A Key Into the Language of America. The idea is to get people to learn Narragansett so they'll actually go be with them. & in the process discover the wild Indians are at least as kindly & "civilized" as, or more so than, the saintly English. & what that says about church government. See Perry Miller on this.

Williams, Blake, Yeats, Mandelstam.... scholars of the wheel of fire.

"Ye shall all be salted with fire. Salt is good; therefore have salt amongst yourselves, & be at peace with one another."

What does this mean, scholars?

According to Williams, throughout human history there was & will be only one true, real, authoritative social covenant established by God with Man, and that was through Moses; and that covenant was dissolved by the crucifixion & resurrection. [This, it should be understood, is not current standard Christian doctrine, which holds that the covenant has never been abrogated - but rather taken into a new dimension, a new step in the process of divine unfolding.]

Thus all human government - especially theocracy, perhaps - is error-prone, a blind muddling-along, & sometimes utter pretense, fraudulent. This from one credited with establishing the first civil state based on precepts of free speech & complete liberty of conscience.

(Then William Blackstone, ensconced with his moldy manuscripts on Study Hill, looks into his alchemical flask & asks... but how, in fact, was that 1st covenant established? Who laid the cornerstone behind Shakespeare's Head? Where is Atlantis, Hart Crane? The rest is silence.)