only an echo of Jerusalem

SPEECH IMPEDIMENT

Uncanny quiet over the face of the earth

when a plague wind blows

like a Sabbath no one chose.

All the crumpled greed, the burnt-up wrath.

The painter paints, the poet bodies forth

rehearsals of embottled ships.

Righteous Ironsides in death-grips,

waves of evil crashing each wake-froth.

We recall the speech impediment of Moses,

his lame stuttering.

The stubborn mule, his bawling;

how the moth anticipates his metamorphoses.

The beard of flame, the copper serpent…

apotropes for lamb

muzzled to kingdom come –

the mute goodness, whose light is spent

in painful denouements of selfless love.

We know these weary nurses

of the commonweal.  Sursum corda

you sweet Cordelias, sent from above.

Amid stark silence of a vacant Mass

my murmurs of a restoration

seem almost abomination.

You must judge what ought to come to pass.

These incoherent old man’s mutterings.

Only an echo of Jerusalem

to come.  Your Jubilee, I AM –

brilliant integrity of all good things.

We hold these truths to be self-evident –

Williams' Carta (so fair,

kind, true).  Coke’s tender care

breathing to Providence (love’s fundament).

4.21.20

that hexed hexagon

PRICKLY ROOFTOP

Only a light whisper of April snow

feathers the riverbank today.

The wind-serpent will flay

with rippling wings its own mud-brown

flow.  The cottonwoods lean overhead

like ribs on a canoe.  Gray veins

of some cast-off snakeskin.

Glass fane of Great Worm (empty, shed).

Where are the springs of yesteryear?

This April curls from cold

& back to cold.  From cold

to cold – inhuman, viral (some Shakespeare

Villon).  So the chill indifference

of animal aggression marks

its seal on each snowflake.

Each one unlike (unique monstrance).

So who invented this immaculate snow?

A mind of winter?  Or

a dreaming Melchior – his

clouds on high, his Bethlehem below?

We sleep, we wake… like soft snowflakes.

We drift, we float… we land

& melt upon a child’s hand.

The soul is like that dark green pine, makes

rough & prickly rooftop – root foundation

for each spindrift, wayfaring

Romany light-traveling

human earth-heart time-migration

*

– so hear the art then, O spiraling 

hearth!  Martian enfoldment

like arms of Odin, bent

around himself – whole tree corralling!

For Snowflake is that hexèd hexagon

of heaven & earth, joined

in your heart, coined

Abraham – red copper of the gun;

that regal object-dart of adoration

– tangled boomerang, returned

upon itself – urned

at the apex of our celebration;

the bread & wine of every sacrifice

offered by universal Everyman

each time she lifts the can

for mite or gold doubloon… our price.

The light snow sweeps across Ireland

& Minneapolis-St. Paul.

A sweet lamb looks from wall

of van Eyck emerald, almost human (sand

or salt will reveal her, underneath

Mississippi varnish).  Flowers

are eternal, soul-power

is substantial… MELEK shall bequeath

his welcome-gift of bread & wine

on his way to Memphis

for the garbage men.  This

my body… this my blood.  Lamp, shine.

4.3.20

moss-green lamb-rock

CHERRY PETALS

Anniversaries, conjunctions... Latrobe’s

bell tower in New Orleans

& a birthday (Walter Whitman’s)

twine reverberations, stellar probes.

This lone outcrop in far north wood

furred-over with green

& phosphorescent lichen

mimes in lime our original Head –

primordial earth-ram (sheepish lamb)

upon the adamant of Time –

Isis, or Miriam –

Virgin bedrock of the bright I AM.

Inexorability of violent history –

labyrinth of Minotaur –

wolf-trap for who we are

spooled out in filmy, rusty tragedy

after tragedy – the pile-up of ’68

the green redhead in Dallas

the blue blackbird in Memphis

& it all seems endless – infernal hate –

O brazen, obdurate Iron Age

of malice toward all!  Only

the slant eye of poetry

mourning on a misty Montauk stage

might warble a different kingdom comin’ –

chaste infant equality.

Your hummingbird infantry,

Walter – your cherry petals, Benjamin.

5.30.19

& know the place for the first time

SOME PALLADIUM

Say we come back to the place of 4

paradisal rivers, & find

it’s a limestone seed-rind

west of St. Lou.  What’s left to explore?

& that grand, sane, towering grainy-mother

is closer, more real

than royal – more U.S. steel

than Byzantine gold (your equal sister-

brother).  How did we get here?

Some palladium of Lamb-

Seeker, out on a limb,

lean-to from Providence canoe... Roger –

halfsome Grain Elevator Song, mayhap

(May 29) – his Pentecost

a Rhody smoke-hole, tossed

southwest, southwest (tornado giddy-up).

Magnanimous hand, reaching toward sunset...

Solomon, seeking Sheba;

a concord St. Columba

spied, twirling Ionian Golden Gate.

Kernel of equal daughters, equal sons –

chaste Isis of West Branch,

Virgo-Astraea in a conch...

a coracle of oracles, lifting crane bones

to life within her almond carousel;

Ophelia & Juliet

transposed to Olivet,

Henry-Persephone retrieved from Hell.

2.22.19

all across Minneapolis

RABBI-PATH

All across Minneapolis

the poet’s left evidence

like tracks under a fence

– long fellow’s footprints –

Nana Bozo the Clown, or

Hiawatha in slippers

(snowshoes, Alberta

clippers).  Fella came before,

might hop here again (ghost

dance, dream song).

Sunday stretched so long.

He was with us in the Lammas-host

like lambchild in the field,

a white cloud drifting

bluegrass... otskèn:rha, sifting

right from wrong (at Lammas-tide).

Bozo Lambrogio breaks up

the woolly categories

of our feral cats – Caesar’s

imbroglios, lions of Judah, Egyptian

pups... will skip the rabbi-path

out of the lake of wrath

back into Nazareth

by August 1st (we’ll do the math

later).  Yolk-black Fabergé cracks

in the snow... imperial

theocracies unreel; almond

Vierge Ouvrante gives berth.  Relax.

2.19.19