a minuscule Mt. Everest

DEEP BREATH

Woke up this mornin’ with m’mind

set on freedom…

– & why Cahokia, hm?

Why this iron spring, set to unwind

primeval intuition of first peoples?

Perhaps it’s simple logic –

some high One, past magic;

Wakan Tanka, speeding on wind (eagles

& lightning, shattering the oak).

Faint scent of acacia

anchored in Ogygia.

Sophie Lightfoot, before anyone spoke.

So, in Australian wilderness

& Abrahamic villages –

among Socratic sages

in desert Siberian fastnesses –

with recent atheists, even

– who contradict themselves

if they refuse to delve

into this question… (re the unbroken

unity of truth itself).  The wind

goes rushing thru the room

in a gust of life… boom!

While over on Monk’s Mound

one handful of cruddy clay whorls

into centripetal J

beneath the Milky Way.

A mundus sprinkled with corals

                   *

or small hill – minuscule Mt. Everest

tattooed with a J

for Jonah, Juliet, or Ariadne…

signum of Persephone-thesis – quest

to rectify kerygma-proclamation

past this wind of madness

overwhelming Loch Ness

with malicious Minotaur (declares U.N.).

So take a deep breath, cries Roger,

stepping forward, forehead

like a hatchet, hand

held outstretched (some blind codger).

The tyranny of the Man of Sin,

the Man of Lawlessness

seems universal – nonetheless...

like an acorn made of lead, woven

into the ruddy branches of the human-

strung quartet (Beethoven)...

132… 1132… – how Magdalen

comes running from the limestone

sepulcher!  & how Natasha limped

up to the poet’s temple…

felt knees crumple…

when the continuum of limpid

violins prepared a shroud for Love

& Guillaume wept, also

under the droning falsetto

of Villon’s smoky crossword (O vvv)…

2.5.20

a thing a thane might ship

MUDDY WINDVANE

The muted pleading of the cottonwoods

meshed in a counterpoint

with myriad redundant

autumn leaves (Chet Baker, Miles).

Sorrow & joy, sickness & health

in a subtle weave of shocks

& echoes (mental blocks

were mystic chords once, Keith).

Beneath your penumbra, Alighieri –

a shadow pantomime.

Fleeting Ravenna rhyme

(Julie on the swing set, Henry

sailing from the limb, laughing).

The logic of your enigmatic

kerygma, then, epileptic

showman?  Merely a line curving

across historical time, into the light

emanating from your heart,

Galilean nazir-sport –

over a chessboard made of night

& day, an abba-rhyme pattern

(pax-bellum-pax, or king-

usurpavenger-prince... a thing

a thane might ship, a Grecian urn).

Bent overlords still shadowbox

musical echoes in refrain.

Mendelssohn leaf-rain

leads me back to Mirror Lakes

                   *

– twin lakes, twin mirrors (eyes

of Oedipus, Antigone) –

Twin Cities ceremony

curing the incest-curse (of Paradise).

You cannot have a child of gods

& men.  Like an albino

freak, or Minotaur

the twin will upset planting periods

& hunting prayers.  The High Priest

tears his robe.  He

says he is the One – he,

he!  Messiah-singularity (least

shall be greatest, last first).  Huh?

Henry earn him tragedy –

dumb spiral out of clay

turn muddy windvane of Columbia.

All about people you know, poetry.

Little Rhody, see –

Rog Williams, Tommy

Gould (Annie Hutchinson too, sadly) –

plumb from Sir Edward Coke

into self-government

by way of Charlie Second

(seedling restoration, kingdom oak)...

til little Providence become

a way of life (like yesterday)

& you reckon the penumbra

yon Lady of the Harbor harbors (hum)

10.28.19

a flower for Bloomsday

CIRQUE MATRIX

Gray Hobo-bird faces a problem :

how to save his own long

featherweight fern song?

How to rewind a strung-out poem?

Effigies & icons flashing by

like ripples in his eye –

Burchfield, El Anatsui...

Hartley, Martin, Klimt... Johnny

Jasper... fond winter raven-

oeuil of Master Bruegel...

Pompey, in the empty well

of Yahweh, was befuddled – No One

There.  The clear plein air of Quaker

meeting house, of Shaker

chair.  The carpenter’s

simplicity of Philadelphian law-

oracles.  We hold these truths...

But Hobo’s murmuring his

Nil Reed Candace house;

his prairie wind blows wild (Ruth’s

trail through mazy corn, tracking

Boaz from Goshen-land).

With poem-in-a-can

in hand (his pemmican) & Red Wing

Thunderbird-Woodpecker perched

atop his hat, he moseys,

slouching, sea to sea;

aboard his polar bear canoe (birch-

                 *

light) he circulates a mystery –

where be this Henry Church

round whom leaf-sundials march?

Planted in Resurrection Cemetery?

Or hidden in a holm oak tree?

The painted whisper gallery

enshades invisibility.

Will he sleepwalk forever, Poetry?

The milkweed monarch fans meekness.

This moth is camouflaged

brown dust.  The sagebrush

rolls through red deserts, the cedars

pine for Juniper (slate-blue).

Time’s broom sweeps clean

but tiny seeds remain.

A microcosmic mustard-yellow

gyroscope (spun in Ravenna

backwater) balances

Galilee on Providence;

the bicycle with one duo-antenna

twirls its silver spokes into

a rose-wheel window.

Where did Harry go,

Hobo?  He’s hidden in Otranto

glass.  He’s riding Pegasus

into a cirque matrix –

cartwheeling carny tricks

as Henry Flower Wilderness.

6.16.17