have you never loved & suffered?

MOON-BEAR

Hobo crawled out of a hollow log

like a moon-bear from hibernation.

The River held him in suspension

between breaths, heartbeats (in a fog).

Have you never loved & suffered, Henry?

Do you comprehend soul-agony?

He was a Man of Sorrows, he –

acquainted with grief – like a lost penny

(Lincoln?) at the bottom of a well.

I have, Hobo.

If you want to know

I too be tarnished imago, two steps from hell.

Like who.  But I carry this flashlight

handed me by Lightning

Littletree one morning

(way back, in Providence).  It all right.

Or going to.  Everything you see

is a fresco-dream,

June-bug – the triple beam

searchlights all round (Imogen Dovie

in your mind).  I see you grinning,

Beatrice.  Bunny Rabbi

and Ignatz O’Lamb, too (hi).

This IGNIS NATURA RENOVATUR thing –

will it spin in the sky?  Little Bear,

Big Bear?  In a sloppy gyre

you may bespiral somewhere

sometime, Hobo... in your underwear?

King David hopped like a rabbi

alongside the canoe.  Micòl

was like... O well.

The pure fire is restoration, Jun-eye.

7.17.19

as in a game of hide-&-seek

PINE ARK

Piero the geometer

graphed the perfect dome

(that marvelous human home

& winking sea of gray matter)

beneath the curvature of San Francesco

in Arezzo – a flock of swans

of radiant intelligence

about their Queen, before the portico

(Temple of Solomon).  He’s hidden

as in a game of hide-&-seek

the wooden matrix (meek

logbox from Tree of Life).  When

Helena comes to Jerusalem

she’ll draw it out again –

sliver from a lion’s

paw, grim rib from Adam’s

galley mast.  Constantine dreams

his tiny golden honey-cross.

Mary’s Pneuma-moss

wells in the quiet kitchen... gleams.

Sweet psyche-legends circulate

around a forgotten rock

in Magdala.  The flock

is scatter-gathered... salty fate

& jittery salts plank-walk the yellow-

black monarchs of love.

Their cedar treasure-trove

is one pine ark (Jonah chi-rho).

7.28.16

Moss-green idiom

PRIMITIVE FRESCO

These cottonwood sentinels beside the river

in the early March sunlight.

May their sense of being right

prevail, Persephone return (forever).

My draft of yearning whispers from

bare cave.  Slight air

of seashore lingers there,

like early dream of motherland.  Home

in a memory of pinewoods, tamarack;

Ravenna in a film

of moss-green idiom –

child-realm of Umbrian yak-yak,

Firenze burble-babble.  One gold hinge

arcs sheltering lintel

over intelligible

gate of Jubilee... & it is so arranged

we never leave the shining ring.

Like a rock of Magdala

muttering ephphatha

our bread & wine are splashed with brine,

salted with everlastingness;

my primitive fresco

roughly points to show

how everything begins to bless –

when Psyche lifts from waterfall

& Raven (with a flick

of wing) is suddenly quick

Turtledove (threshold within us all).

3.2.16

8

 
Think of it - in the heart of town
in the well of the piazza's madeleine
in the inner chambers of Siena's
nerve center : a fresco-sun.

 
Shines through the Black Death night
(vale, Brunetto).  He was a bookish
city journalist, his panoramas flush
with tags, encomiae, Italo-Latinate

 
cartoon balloons... memos for precepts
to be kept in mind, aides-memoire
for puffy counselors (collected there
within the glow).  Dream-ships -

 
papyrus-barges of the word (parchment
and ink the lifeblood of the civitas);
packets of ben commun, epitomized
in pithy brush-light (air apparent).

               
               *

 
Shines through the Black Death night
an image of measurement (wisdom's reproof).
The mind (unclear, uncertain... pregnant, aloof).
And it is not enough.  The anchorite

 
in solitude, the nurse in the Baghdad ward
reach understanding in extremity
deeper than any rational city
can celebrate (cerebrally).  Hard

 
is the path, and narrow is the way
- or Ramirez, the immigrant
in the mental hospital (with his crayon).
In the Beginning was the Word, Jose.