grain in the hold in the Boundary Waters

Mary (Elvira) Ravlin Gould, Jan. 2020

BRIGHT ANCHOR

I was wheeling my mother Mary around

the old people’s home yesterday.

We came upon the Ash Wednesday

service, by chance, & rolled on in.

The genial priest lifted up the Book

& prayed for us all

& traced a cross of charcoal

on our brows (despite my mother’s look

of wary puzzlement).  & we rolled on.

Her father was an engineer.

Master of grain elevator

& sewage plant, he built his own

brick house along the Mississippi

back in 1929, or so –

Barnett & Record Co.

John H. Ravlin (everlastingly).

Granddad, your fathers came from Dublin

whirled by coracle & shamrock

to Vermont.  By hard knock

grace & cornucopia, they ventured in

to the interior.  You heard violins

of Verdi… Elvira

(some serene Barber adagio)

& in great lofty mountainous grain bins

of full, deep faith, one mustard seed

of your stern secret mother

glints – compassionate anchor

for Milky Way (ark’s cornerstone, indeed).

2.27.20

John H. Ravlin in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (1940s)

sketchy star-map

GREEN PYRAMID

The idea of Janus.  Osip is born;

war saw.  The tiny hexagons,

whose bite is bitterness

& valediction, zigzag down

here, in our Cerealian Capital

(Pillsbury, General Mills).

Grandpa, in Saskatchewan

wills grain elevators toward the pole.

Above these winter clouds, invisible

Venus the flower-star

describes tobacco-petal arcs –

Gravesend’s Dark Lady – indelible

cartwheeling Corn Maiden – springing

& sovereign rite of way;

dewy washerwoman, our MVP

lifting the horizon over D.C. (washing

everything).  Verily... except a corn of wheat

fall into the ground & die...

Over the green pyramid, an eye;

red rose for Memorial Day (complete

now, finished).  Elvira, out of Ravlin

opera, spins toward blue clay

herself.  We go that way

with snowflakes, with January’s frozen

squeaky violin... we go together.

At our reed-muddy center

she alights on the perimeter –

Adonai cornucopia, our milky tether.

1.15.20

from David Ovason, The Secret Architecture of the Nation's Capital, p.190