scribe's tattoo

RIVER WAVES

I miss the mourning doves of Providence

at the end of September

amid these amber

sheaves of wheat (gleaned evidence

of Morning Star).  A new immigrant’s

landed in Minneapolis

light gray, with neckpiece

of black-white bands.  Postulant’s

collar, mayhap?  Or a scribe’s tattoo

ably marked upon the neck

like Isaac or Melchizedek

or some Eurasian collared coo-coo

hums b-flat from the fiery furnace

of her supernatural

affection (international

orange toucan, maybe – or Falcon-Ace)

& so transfigures frozen Everyman

out of his callous armor

into another feathered Amor

winging like an arrow back to Magdalen

& turning to golden almond in her hand

like the sun beheld by Ondine

underwater (bright, serene).

As river waves lap softly overland

her clear tone modulates the earth

back to its mended origin

within your warm all-human

clasp (chastened Columbia’s rebirth).

9.30.19

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

shadow of a shadow

SILVER THREAD

A raven stitches broken arcs

over Lebanon cedars,

through layers of cinders

on sands of Galilee.  These marks

print tracks, embed the shadow

of a shadow (of

a shadow).  Whose love

cooled into bottled borders, crow-

foot scars?  Etched into sealed eyelids

the guardians of sleep

administer fear, & reap

nightmare (endless cycle in the Cyclades).

I have no wrath, hums the writhing

wheel of flame – my smile

will melt stalactite guile

until their funny bones come lurching

from the humus... rows of soldiers

thrown from stone, their hearts

wrung into speaking parts.

Her modulation wove its sutures

out of the basalt lid of night.  The ocean

gathers all its woe into

moist glance of pain... you

hear her sigh.  Love’s Jonah-sign

one silver thread – gray clouds,

gray sea, gray gull, gray

dove... & every way

her wing turns (lifting raven-moods).

7.14.16

Black holes have rings of light straw hair

SCRIMSHAW TRINKET

                    It’s the past that tells us who we are.  Without it

                    we lose our identity.  –  Stephen Hawking

A raven carried heaven-manna

out of the ark to lonesome

Jonah – him just come

from under the whale-rib (manna

overboard) stranded on sand

off Galilee, RI –

& it made him cry.

Those crispy cackles he couldn’t

understand – like low gull-talk

sent through a black-

hole paradox;

light straw climbed an orange rock

from the event horizon up to

null infinity –

it was all catenary,

looped in one wave-smile... – who?

Gravity? – or Grace?  Eurydice,

maybe.  (It was her cave.)

Spoiled meat you crave

is portioned by division – say,

two doves for every plowman’s mule.

Queequeg in his casket

(like a scrimshaw trinket)

penned our sempiternal Rule –

each rustic Penny in the well of night

was tender out of love.

Her vernal sparkle-trove

is polyglot – Euphrasia (eyebright).

6.8.16

Monk's Mound (Illinois)

Leaf to leaf, door to door

OATMEAL BANTER

Light eddying through layers

of overcast gray sky

whispering, simplify.

Willow’s underleaf, lyre-players?

Silver.  Copper-gray the color

of this beech’s mammoth shade,

whose granite roots cascade

light (leaf to leaf, & door 

to door).  Motionless in time-

space, emitting signs

her gray hide underlines

in graphite (stubborn Balaam’s

Hoover-prophecy).  The beech,

the book, will not be moved.

Ink trail of raven-dove...

bare gouache, still ground (beseech

thee, spare thy headstrong mule) –

O break the prison mold,

snow-blind brain-cold!

Where father & son meet (fool

with fool) beneath the malachite

green veins, gray matter

of bran (or oatmeal banter).

Strange personal jade wight –

shade-mutter, everlasting

Sheba.  Clouds gather

overhead – weather

lit thunder (shackle-blasting).

2.4.16

In a Scattergood world

PURE SOUND

                              i.m. Robert Treuer

Back East, in Rhode Island, the big snow

coming.  Thinking of William

Blackstone, hermit-pilgrim – the

one who went to live with Miantonomi

& the other red-men.  To the House

of 4 Pines – under

cartouche of Little Bear,

North Star.  Out of Nazi Austria

sped a peregrine, by grace of God

& pity of strange braves

(Scattergood saviors,

anonymous donors... meek just good).

To a tree farm he fostered (in remote

forest).  Led into circle

of silent First People,

tending ashes (sitting shiva).  Little

prow of acacia, rocking near Itasca-

Nile... your upside-down

fire-drill will drown its

candle in stony Minnehaha.

Sigh, winging out into grey sound

(b-flat at midnight).

The musicologist

from Florence mutters back to ground

just so – back to the pigeon-clay

of primordial, steadfast

Bee (until the last

dragon of Sheol fades away).

1.22.16

the eccentric Col. Percy H. Fawcett

 7


  
 After the walls of Byzantium tumble
 and Captain Gago crashes – after
 Percy among the jungle cats
 writes his last letter – in autumn,

  
 after a six turns out to be nine
 and Labor Day is done –
 you will come into your own.
 The way a Pope goes home again,

  
 or in a rusted iron cemetery
 people find their poetry at last:
 the way Pushkin-cat (after a feast
 of ghosts) returns limping and weary

  
 but (for the ninth time) still alive –
 the way a buried sun (like an innocent
 in jail) shines, and the dark is darkened
 to an utmost day of judgement – weave,

  
 then, birthright song, like a final dance
 which is secretly beginning:  deus
 exam out of a columbarium – rose-
 dust mandala-magnetism – salience

  
 of clay mourning-dove, or an ocarina
 crooning out of silence – begin then,
 sundance:  welded gate of Stephen
 into Jerusalem's birth-labor day

  
 of summer sun-heart – you double-
 squared orthogonal octagon of em-
 braces, circling toward a rustic M
 of iron-risen Rublev-gongs – rubl-...


    
                                    6.6.99

(- from Forth of July, v. 2 - The Grassblade Light. see line 3 above. ***now how the heck did I know that, then??)