winter river

MOTTLED BEND

Driving through wintry Iowa

in the rain (at the end

of autumn).  Mottled bend

of browns & grays... the tall silo

lost in a sea of plowed soil;

Theophilus, with his lonesome

boat (Grandpa’s handsome

grain elevator).  Fruits of toil –

pyramid for wheat-rain

in a grain-ear (last

trump, sounding).  Blast

of train-horn... all over again?

The hearth-stone flares like a bald eagle

lost on the road (between

La Porte City &

Davenport).  Feathered angle

set upon shoulders.  Nobody.

Just a Memphis priest,

Melchizedek... last

shall be first (least greatest, boy).

They laid the foundation stone

like Chartres rock.

Under the most black

dirt they could find (the Masons, son) –

on 15th April, 1791

(two generation

before Abe Lincoln).

Hearth-blaze in corner (soldered one).

12.20.18

personae taking shape

SOFT GLANCE

On the high ridge of River Road

Henry seeks his throne –

little Sophie-chair (long gone

from her gazebo octagon). O Lord

Apollinaire of Poetry, what now?

Is the Great War ended?

Are the lads mended?

Have we entered the Third Aeon?  No,

not yet, vows Joachim (1132).

When Eagle molts

to Coulombee, & bolts

from heaven like a swallow blue...

the eye of Providence triangulates

over an Isis-pyramid

of West Branch clay – hid

from Cahokia to now, he states.

Hobo slumps closer to the river, sound

asleep.  He dreams of her,

who dreams of him – somewhere

over the Franklin Bridge (an Indian mound).

Henry, fragment of Osiris –

iris from Rhode Island –

sees her too.  Sand

curves through silent Providence...

soft glance of Magdalen, absorbing

mourning (wrung like tears,

like rain).  Those anxious piers...

Hart’s, John’s... frame her redeeming orb.

11.18.18

restoration will abolish dice

HOBO-MAP

The calm oval of the bridge

floats in the stream

like bubble on a beam.

A fringe of green trees edge

the shoreline... memory of summer.

Water seeks its own

level.  Every stone

melts in its riverbed.  Your humor,

Hobo, settles into Ocean State

as silky Mississippi

seeps into the mighty

estuary of the Gulf (trompette

marine).  So your melodious

escapism is salted too,

with fire – there ain’t no

place that doesn’t see you, Mose.

Cradle him in your coracle

of creamy wisdom, Sophie –

let light from a tree

of galaxies be his menorah (Huck,

that is – Huck Finn).  Your soaring

arc (beside Cahokia)

hovers, a stealth utopia –

eagle-prong, heat-seeking

beak from heaven.  Like that rapt

golden raptor, diving

on rainbow wing

toward his vanishing point

                *

(infinity) which Joachim (mulish

Franciscan hermit)

signed, Age of the Spirit...

Fusion of molten phoenix, starfish

turtledove... risen to dance

lightfooted on the grave

of death (one palm-wave

soothes her brow-circumference).

Only leave him his primitive wood-burnt

etching from Rhode Island.

Someone might understand

its clambit rhythm somehow – learnt

by beachcomber, drifted to sound

of sea-wash... steady laving

for pain... life-saving

Island Rose (from rocky ground).

The Word sings out of rosy shell chambers,

complex inflected folds,

ineffable.  She breaks molds

by clash of scalloping tambours –

beams smiling splendor in a glance;

beholds the Earth, clipped

into chains, gripped

by small potentates (from Bossy Manse)...

My hobo-map of Paradise

includes Newport (Jackie

& Jack wed, merrily);

my restoration will abolish dice.

11.6.17

peregrinations of a chair

EQUAL SIGN

That blazing Paradisal throne

at apex of the Rose –

for lucky Henry, Dante’s

messianic king (whose arbitration

disinterested, just & fair

may foster restoration

for acerbic nation)

is not much like this baby chair

Sophie brought from Providence

its bright red plastic beached

in Minneapolis (porched

beneath a cedar octagon of silence,

anonymity).  Vertiginous

encompassing domain

of spiritual Zion...

that firmament Moses, Aquinas,

Aristotle wrought in brazen

ineradicable raven-

ink (the prophet’s organ-

groan, the scribe’s deep acumen)

out of the ghetto of Venetian

copper foundry, lifting

moss-green Liberty (sing,

Lazarus, your stormy consummation)

into wave-bent infinite prairie –

a horizontal plate

caressed by grassland fate

beneath high snowmelt of Persephone

                *

& Evening Star (ineffable complete

coniferous oak tree

whose almond amie

très jolie spreads acorns at her feet

into an ancient corn-maze wheel)

– O Henry, where’s

the seat of these empires?

Your throne’s only an acorn peel –

your realm a plastic kiddy chair.

Raven zigzags the gazebo –

traces Incan shadow

aslant cornices inscrutable (& bare).

Eagle or condor even higher.

Pure air (transparent)

laves the fundament.

An equal sign grounds every choir

in Lincoln-logos (quipu-fire).

Chaste diamond of snow

& Black Elk’s slow

Wakan Tanka (Vallejo-spire)

turning every way.  You’ll see

the back of me, until

you recognize Good Will

I Am.  In Red Wing country,

where grey Thunderbird came down

to meet his Galilean

twin – the two-in-one

Tom-Tom, guest-dancing (holy clown).

7.5.17

paradise thirteen

ELEVATOR MATRIX

An eagle gliding motionless

& swift under the rain...

a message from the sun

outside my window.  Inverness

beyond the clouds, it says.  Dauntless

Dante beheld a double wheel

like Charlie’s Wain, meal-

sifting Hamlet’s dead-end eddies

into Ariadne’s crown of yellow

maize (Paradiso XIII)

at the center of the sun;

Dominican, Franciscan, we shall go

along with Beatrice too,

into that Minneapolis

where incognito Jesus

is a twin St. Paul (aboard canoe);

from White Bear Lake to Resurrection

Cemetery, we’ll unbury

Berryman & Mary

Magdalen right now – a Raven

intersection at Jonah & 4th,

a Jubilee bird-fest

out of the cosmic nest.

Jerusalem is raying mirth

from every corner of the universe;

the gray hide of a mule

hides one God-Jewel –

gold-sprinkled fiery agate-cosmos

      *

spiraling like fingerprint

of Everywoman, every

man.  The ordinary

ferris wheel begins to glint

with light most cosmopolitan –

green emerald of soul

freedom (personal

live-oak of Okeanos – constellation

of the Showy Lady’s-Slipper).

Be careful how you tread

this living woods of dead

leaves, sprouting crocuses – your

difficulties are not partisan,

your cures are neither red

nor blue.  The crownèd head

of King George, or the plowman

trampled underfoot by Mammon,

or the young stranger, mortally

undone by poverty,

her kids tossed into pauper’s prison

by our favorite mythologies...

we’ll mingle in the great

grain elevator matrix,

where the brightest of celebrities

& most anonymous of soldiers

meet.  Before the stars fall

through the vortex – Love

wingspans our last full measures.

4.18.17

with malice toward none, with charity for all

BIRCH-BEE

                  i.m. MLK

We walk together on a zigzag path

tracing the death of kings

miming crow’s wings

of trickster history – wrath

bursting yellow-orange (balloon

for Apollinaire,

strange signal-flare

scripted for carrier pigeon)

like scars of Mars across an unknown

martyr-soldat (Eeyore-

Verman, smoked as of yore

in mustard-bowl of Bosch-demon)...

Glassed like a pair of broken bifocals

the earth’s blind O

& heaven’s diving zero

mesh in the crosshairs (personals

coulombe).  Shepherd’s last calendar

(yours, mine, ours).

Beyond blank stares

of slate, in Arctic Cimetière –

beneath Jonah’s anchor, tattooed

by Minotaur... one homing

turtledove draws OMO

in red chalk.  Graphite étude

of pensive Milky Way... orant

abysmal honey-beard’s

raven-rose word

lifting light birch-bee ark (aslant).

1.15.17

There's a whole in the bucket

PLAYGROUND SWING

When Joachim Fiore, hermit-monk

hidden in heel of Italy,

after many a fasting-day

frescoed his Fauve raptor-hawk

like a rainbow-feathered calumet

smoking the end of aeons...

When the dust returns

from whence it came (Osiris sunset-

raft, veering to purple bull’s-eye)

& bones of bearberry

revert to green hay

& Alma the Corn Maid heaves a sigh

for Land o’Lakes (their vanishing,

twinkling, hexagonal

bye-bye)... then shall we all

rise too, in a Sabbath playground swing

of the Pleiades – & wheel with Mama

Ursa Major, in a New

World Symphony (Ojibwa

Lullaby, scribbled on your way

from Minnehaha, Anthony).  Because

the whole in the silver bucket

is a river-song (Pawtuxet,

maybe) sweeter than ever was –

is your redemption-hymn, O Solomon.

Sheba the Buffalo Lady

knows it, as does Maggie

Galilee... The Eagle from the Oven-Sun.

3.10.16

Drowsy motion of the river R

FRESH CRUST

The immense raincloud stretched like serpent

or shadow of raven-

wing, on an evening horizon

over the Pacific, just past the unspent

abyss of Golden Gate.  Only here

ice scales an ever-brooding

Mississippi – black Earth blood-

stream (like Nile in winter mirror).

My Neva-Neva land folds history

into an origami crane –

an ever-moving terrapin

lapping on a chain (of clay).

A flower clambers from those rings –

a million-pillowed peacock

Rose, whose eyes flock

van der Weyden faces (channelings

of worm-warp smiles).  Lyre-kings

hung like Christmas bulbs

from every thorn; their clubs

thronged in night circles, chorusing;

the Word was crumbling, in a whirlpool

(Ocean River, circulating

echoing Hector ring)...

‘til Joey the Calabrian (my cool

collaborator) sketched an eagle

plummeting – flipped

up a fresh crust, dipped

in wine & snow – lifted his bugle...

1.7.16