MAY-MONTH
Again, the quiet of a cloudy day
in Minneapolis. May Day
in quarantine. This is the day
maidens in flowery garlands would ply
their threads around the blossoming May-
pole. Hobo is not Falstaff, I say –
he is the King of May;
a blooming almond be his rod of sway.
*
Meanwhile, archaic Hen the Rain King
by circuitous path hath circled
back to River Road.
His early neighborhood – passing
his mother’s house, her father built
– that Master of Grain Elevators
(Ravlin, J.H.). His crop rotator’s
resting now. River-tongues will gather silt.
An old man hoists his memories
upon his back. Their weight,
grown heavy, will grow light…
Grace is a salty providential breeze.
I hear the whisper of her crane-
bone flute – the drone
of one trompette marine…
Guillaume’s grande dame will rise again.
*
& I sense Osip’s revolving sisters,
melding gradually their
sarabande. Rose flowers
share circumference (O lento tenderness).
*
I never want to leave this house.
Orioles sing in the forest
under their shade palimpsest…
(oaks’ rattling snare-susurrus).
*
A fresh breeze brings the May-month in.
The sisters ring their double wreath.
The young hawthorn on Fisher St.
is blooming pink. The almond
in her dark eyes glows, her smile
of Sheba-Shekinah… the lady
of the Song of Songs (spry
tree of Galilee, in Rhody Isle).
*
The gawky prehistoric gingko
Granddad planted is
still there (at 1615). Its
golden Memphis fans billow
in breezes off the Mississippi.
The asphodel, acacia…
the acorns greening, high
over the house… & now I see
her – cartwheeling across a field
like some sapling tornado!
Sophie or Pocahontas? O
that Gravesend kid – her diamond shield
my royal seal! Her acorn coracle
my Isis barge – her eye
my Argo’s midnight sky!
Across the Black Sea of a world-debacle
shining (congruent) one American ray –
my Henry-church, our
Churnagogue… one flour-
cattedrale – out of spiritual clay!
*
Like simple San Fran in Frisco
he crost himself, at height
of orange Golden Gate –
where Juliet booked… O
her last, self-cancelled flight. & Henry
built a rude crossroad
in old Rhode Eye. Sold
on Roger’s fine distinction – worldly
profiting & holy soul-seeking be not
the same. Yet they are wed
by law-abiding God
into a single providential knot –
that normative & innocent new world
as old as children underneath a tree
chanting together of a chaste reality
where Love is as the Ocean – pearled
in tides of light (beneath the moon,
beyond the moon). This charity
stands like a tall pine tree,
from earthy root up to invisibility… one
Union of pure dream-substantiality;
good will, reflected in the hearts
of humankind – with all our arts
in-woven there (O graceful tapestry).
*
The little magnolia on River Road
by Granddad’s elegant abode
unleashed her winter load
of fluttery wings (Primavera mode).
Persephone, Eurydice go underground
& Beatrice to the sky…
a grain of wheat must die
so spring’s magnolia blooms abound.
May Day… the worker bees unite.
The earth itself is in labor
fired in the kiln of Evermore.
Communion loaves of clay ignite.
Everything spins in the green matrix.
Liberty & justice, equity
& equilibrium… an origami
fold of love & intellect – deep Genetrix
a whirl of fiery faery feet – Elohim
twirling on galactic rim
with ocarina Jonah-hum,
to glaze the grail-stone with her hymn.
Sophie was making rivers on the patio,
& found a black-brown woolly bear –
small furry embryonic caterpillar
searching for a leaf to call ground zero.
Henry was looking for an oak-bole too.
At end of May, at Pentecost,
on Dante’s birthday, JFK’s… lost
Restoration RI zone? Hagia Sophia? – YOU.
5.1.20
