down around Kay-Rho

SALT-LICK

Prince Henry Hal, like a latter-day Latrobe

went surveying his great property

in swamps – following Path P

down around Kay-Rho, mapping his globe.

& he was most lost.  Loster than lost.

His sidekick Hobo sighed.  Said –

this palm at the end of your mind

holds an eye that glows, a wave-tossed

moon.  Pearl, embossed with diamond

& ruby… emeralds for eyelashes.

There, where kingfisher splashes –

a quatrefoil rose window, set in almonds.

Notre Dame burned down today, Hobo.

The blaze destroyed the spire,

almost the whole… – F’ sho.  Fire

will do that.  But there’s another one, y’know.

We already passed that house.  Down MLK

Way, on Black Elk Boulevard

(in Buffalo).  Look hard,

Henry – you’ll see him sign the X-tree

with his finger… mark the six trails

like a phosphor Southern Cross.

His medicine mends every loss –

’twas his last full measure split the rails

like lightning.  Now the brave who give

their lives to heal the sick

come to his green clover salt-lick –

circle the hearth-fire – bright, contemplative.

4.15.20

relativity behavior at the end of May

NEF-TUNE

& what if all the Seekers, Roger’s progeny

– that prophet-salt of the earth –

assembled in an ark (Bertha

the birth-canoe)?  Like an almond eye?

Like tall Sophia-Top, spiraling from sky?

The quintessential star

of relativity behavior

in the Great Congregation, at the end of May

(5.29.1919, to be exact).  When Albert

raised a toast to the memory

of time & space, & we

felt that fire... like Baked Alaska in the desert.

Birthday for Ocean, constellate;

malingering little reprobate

always castigated by Bay State,

always flaming in a pentagram – complete

salt sea-bird tugboat-gal

who lofts Old Ironsides

to cosmic shipyard one Ides

of July (my Galilean madrigal).

It is the nef-tune, from the underside

of the sea, of the mind;

Love’s ecliptic incline,

like one grain of sand.  Wave, light... abide;

to launch us from our shadowy shells

& melancholy corners

into this brilliancy of yours...

all-human cradle where the hearth-fire dwells.

1.29.20

until this firefly leaps

BLACK SWALLOWTAIL

The flickering faintness of a hobo fire

grew steadier as Henry drew

near.  All for you,

muttered Hobo.  Your Falstaff, sire.

The heart’s a cracked & splintering

toy drum, he droned...

Henry just groaned.

He felt pangs of fibrillating

Providence – inviolate rose island

in the hearthland of the sea,

where what might have been might free

one Bonnard fête from tragedy (a sand

mandala, slipping under the wave

of pewter experience).

Imperfect sense is

normal, Hobo (hustling to the grave).

Look at that butterfly in Whitman’s weeds,

Henry!  Monarch, Hobo?

No – black swallowtail.  So

azure constellates, where black clay bleeds.

Ouroboros universalis – until

this firefly leaps... a spark

your gemstone soul to mark –

the pure gold’s melting to fulfill.

                   *

Like a gyroscope, the soul balances

on threads of conscience

& the normal universe

awaits your restoration, Hobo Eli sez.

7.23.19