like Frisco shepherd

SOLID AIR

Our Lenten season creaks along.

Involuntary shut-ins

calibrate their sins

or contemplate that deep-time throng

still singing songs through solid air

(celestial City on a Hill).

Who loves like Roger will

yet see Rose Isle, past baleful stare

& power-grabbing guile.  Meanwhile

Prince Hal will follow Hobo

like Huck Jim, & go

where currents flow (deep Delta style).

That Sleeping Lord of David Jones

dreams watercolor landscapes

old as Magdalenian apes,

bright as Justinian gemstones…

they glow with compassionate faces

beneath shimmering raven-stars

across midnight blue

while drowsy Hobo rolls a smudge of clay

(Pipestone maroon) into an eye

anchored in leafy palm (ala

Cahokia) – de son bateau c’est clé.

The King looks from his mandorla

like Frisco shepherd… mild

as forest mint gone wild,

sweet as nursing nightingale (selah).

His mother is the Queen of France,

his father is invisible

whose whispers out of Israel

ignite Prince Hal’s American romance.

4.6.20

pokey asphodel

SMOKE-TREASURY

That the diamond exists, murmurs Black Elk

justifies your dream.

Octahedral theme

of orientation by humility (MLK

& JFK meet in your mandala-canoe).

As Roger the Seeker christened

Providence a refuge, at the end

of seeking (for beginning anew).

To model the heavenly kingdom of God

in clay, or dusty speech

like a doorway, or Gateway Arch;

like rose mandorla, made of flesh & blood.

Not city on a hill, but village

in a valley, by the river’s

mouth – one Narragansett

giver’s canonical Key into the Language

of America.  That the diamond exists

justifies your dream

in shades.  Mandelstam

(in Pushkin & Scriabin) writ of this –

because the Redemption has already happened

art is set free, to celebrate

(watch Oscar Cullmann adumbrate

this meaning in his diagram).  The End

is the beginning.  Not that the end has come.

Only interrogate

this blistered heart

to find that smoky rite of Eastern Rome

                   *

spring in the limping step of herald Hart

or the epileptic anguish

of poet Prof. English

Berryman (in his hexagonal ziggurat

of Resurrection Cemetery – over the river

from St. Paul).  Come home,

patters that silver stream

from crane-bone flute (archaic sliver

flinting mica, in Cahokia); a raven

laughter diagram

or Bluejay paradigm

or Jonah-dove conundrum (rune haven);

a sweeping cry out of Cautantowwit’s

smoke-treasury; an answer

for yon affectionate peacemaker

when he crawled into the Narragansetts’

welcome-tent.  A smile (ineffable

as that 6-sided snowflake

traced by Black Elk

over the grave of Buffalo Bill).

All this intricate nautical geometry!

– these asides by Hobo,

his obeisance to Venus (Virgo-

ascendant sunset cemetery) –

is just the flimsiest balsa-wood scale model

of an Old Ironsides ark

or Constitution… spark

for Gravesend dancing-floor (pokey asphodel).

3.11.20

the otherness of the poem

RIVER-VEIN

The turning year brings its anniversaries.

Sunken ships in the harbor.

My fleeting image of an arbor

green on the slope at Golden Gate – Julie’s

last day (her father Jim’s birthday).

Today the sun glistens

as if through Temple linens;

pearl beyond price, merciful Gateway...

The otherness of the poem is merely

the cosine of a conversation,

Cuz.  Light trinity of sun-

moon-star, embedded in clay lips (dearly).

As America is balanced in the scales

by a feather from Byzantium,

so a Pipestone eagle-drum

summons a kingdom borne on wing-sails.

Covenantal arc of steel

at navel of the earth;

gangway to spoke-berth

coralized beyond our iron wheel.

& from a pearl-eye in the mandorla

light beams to every hamlet-

brig across the planet –

melting the blood-red wax of Danelaw

& Washington, pouring dark wine

into each muddy river-vein,

lofting all-human

fellowship again (curving J-spiral sign).

12.7.19

all the unspoken waltzing things

SEA-GRAVE

Henry has his scribbly hobbies.

Hobo is obsessed.

Osiris in his nest

buried (maybe touches the Keys).

A Viking ship in Minnesota

sleeps near Lake Itasca

like a Moses-mandorla

or canoe (garaged in Ferrara);

a pregnant Virgo by Francesca

curves in an oval

like a miniature whale.

These fish are scaled to hallelujah

& back – one swallow swallowing

a smaller, swifter swallow –

& water seems shallow

until you measure it (by hollowing

a sea-grave in the Milky Way).

& so Jonah yodels,

while Akhmatova spells

lowly on an ocarina (hey ey

yo).  A warbling robin sings

out of Mississippi clay

her infinite wedding day –

all the unspoken waltzing things

logrolling like a planet made of grace

in a dream-songe dream, Henri.

Near that Melusina-sea

glistens in memory (her San Fran face).

7.10.19

May Goulding at her Negus launch

UNFOLDING SHEEP

So the double wheels of the Venn diagram

(a kind of astigmatism from

from Ravenna to home)

mesh in a translated spacetime –

East to West become Rome-Byzantium

Greek to Italian Catholic

Orthodox – majestic

Chartres to homespun NOLA Notre Dame.

I’m working on a bridge, sez Hobo.

Under that nature morte

(Peto, Brown Decades) – what

the flower of liberty became... oh no.

The lilies on the funeral train

(Gould was an engineer).

Abe Lincoln’s here –

great Julius Caesar’s ghastly coin

(one lethal copper penny).

The wheel slowly revolves.

Agony gradually resolves.

The quiet sepulcher (Gesthemane)

became a bargaining chip at the Crusades.

What molts the World-Ruler

from Ides of March to your

sweat-April soul-showers (the blade’s

Excalibur) is some indomitable eagle-

heart – bald as the snowfields

north of International Falls,

wide as the river south of Angola.

                    *

You mark the justice of the refugee,

the accurate perception

of the slave.  Moses-pontoon

or old Italian canoe... it’s simply

the humble carpenter’s sharp eye

encapsulated in a bead

of honey (life’s high meed) –

gold oval of air, its quiddity.

Like throne of Isis in West Branch,

or Grant Wood making space

for Herbie Hoover’s birthplace –

like May Goulding at her Negus launch

(a cup of ceremony from deep

Ethiopia) for Henry Flower –

blooming nom-de-plume, your

lambent, flammable, unfolding sheep.

Rhode Island waits for you,

Son of the Evening Star;

little acorn-czar,

your birthday rhymes with Manitou –

palladium of shimmering mosaic

merging with river-clay

to meet Oak-Apple Day

for restoration (JFK).  A wake, awake!

It’s Rooster Henry, dusting off

the grave.  It’s everyone

thinking the train’s long gone –

finding an acorn in a hollow trough.

3.3.19

inhabit they a shady arch

TABLE RONDE

Henry often stumbles off his perch

in his high Henry Poem.

Just try to follow him!

The pinetop sways... the oaks, the birch...

watch his Memorial to the Future lurch

from Mr. Groggy to A Hobo

Lunch.  Need not be so.

The poem simply tracks a search

for common speech, O inarticulate

idiot of  mewl-wander!

Only this, to ponder :

the universe is personal.  Its Fiat

Lux is founded in immeasurable heart,

compassionate & lovingkind –

one courier-pigeon from blind

adoration bears more light than any art.

The glittering mounds in Minneapolis

are tiny frozen hexagons.

Rough flesh-tone limestones

harbor prehistoric ocean memories.

Henry, with help from sluggish Hobo,

knots a river-seine

for safety-net.  Someone

might need a heartfelt rescue (at zero

below).  Inhabit they a shady arch

at center of the earth –

Lips Monastery berth;

her mandorla was a canoe for March

to paddle into April confluence,

her lips muttered an almond

salience – jazz Table Rond

with sweet Melchizedek (her Memphis

echoes with his vernal blues).

Ineffable seine of mutuality...

sign for soul liberty

from one Pole Star (High Rocky News)

we share out like a Lammas loaf

raised in grain elevators

west of St. Lou

& buried secretly (beneath the roof

of the mouth of a cave in Galilee).

Hobo hands Henry so

his eye-in-hand.  Its glow

is pure lovelight – it whispers : See.

& he saw the glittering waterfall

of wheat-grains slanting down

across a wide Missouri-nation

into midstream of each & all;

he felt the dream-song melding chords

(Ojibwa river-springs)

within Dakota Red Wing’s

Thunderbird – he touched the threads

of word-music, a glossolalia.

As round a high room

agate-fire will zoom –

lighting the prow of old Ecclesia.

3.3.19

mysteries of the oval garage

BENIGN SPECTACLES

Those benign spectacles of the Franklin Bridge

were long frozen over.

Inside & outside were

captured in a mickle mirror (garage

at the edge of Ferrara).  It wasn’t a map

of America, so much;

only Hobo’s tender clutch

(Falstaff) of Henry’s hand (old chap).

He wants to show you something.  Opens

one puffy palm, and there

tattooed in coppery-red scar

– soft oval eye, mandorla lens.

America sleeps in her own green fields.

Feminine Hamlet croons

to her, lit by Hobo-moons...

Turn back to thy La Paix, Ophelia.

That Egyptian Art-Deco monolith

of Roger, stepping off

the cliff – out of his skiff

into a void of air, the whole dream-myth...

– & it was underfoot all the time.

Like a grail-dish, or agate

eye; a lamp on a frigate

or arc of a torch, Lazarus-rhyme

or Jonah-wing.  The harbor’s safety-net

for flowery Juliet –

buoyant, incarnate

Normandie (gilding Henry’s Mayflower signet).

2.26.19

to Nathan Phillips

GREEN HABITAT

                                    to Nathan Phillips

The Mirror Lakes in Mendelssohn

were smooth & clear – were

mirrors of the weather,

mirrors of each other (twins).

Your mind’s a mirror too (cloudy

today, with intimations

of its limitations).

Looming earth, a child’s infinity...

In his mandorla of Ferrara

Giorgio hooked the canoe

against a garage wall (you

remember, Micòl?).  Observe, selah

its simple elegance & rightness.

Mirror of itself –

bowstring of Guelf

& Ghibelline.  O blessed senselessness!

I surmise the one you call Jesus Nazir

arose not in hothouse of fear

but a rural atmosphere –

full of parabolic melodies, limpid, near.

The Son of Man... the Son of Man...

not him, but you – & you...

like Hagia Sophia in a crew

of galley slaves.  Their submarine plan

winks from searchlight eyes – their fleece

the gold thread of Ariadne,

knotted in Rhode Island

Black Ships (ocean’s milky matrix

                      *

poured from ineffable Promised Land).

In Siena, insouciant Pax

lounges by sober Justice

in the fresco of Good Government (hand

of Ambrogio).  That thread from beyond

exotic Trebizond

plummets, au fond

to Minotaur’s despair – demented Roy

Dumonde; yet we are gathered up

into another summa

body – solidarità

of Love’s affectionate grail-cup.

It was not price nor money could have

purchased Rhode Island;

Rhode Island was purchased

by love.  So step into the rawhide nave

of Nathan Phillips’ Wakan Tanka –

Spirit beyond each sullen

pond of identification.

Spring winds the rust of iron rancor

into another, more spacious America –

florid green habitat

of Uncle Weaver Rabbit,

Auntie Corn Gatherer (limestone Columbia).

That mud-brown mirror harbors hidden

depths.  & yet she’ll float –

Nile-Isis, river-mote –

your eye-in-hand (nearby, Cahokian).

1.19.19

bottled in an oak-knot

LIGHT SHIVERS

A silver filigree of January ice

atop the Mississippi.

An eye from remote milky

paradise congeals mid-stream.

In the mandorla, the king smiles

who must die.  Rain

wells from Magdalenian

locks, sways down the aisles.

Reality’s an unctuous parasite

whose masculine will

melds to feminine style.

Psyche’s a rose (hermaphrodite).

You search the scriptures, yet

you do not come to Me.

My mother is a refugee,

her kid’s a goldfinch in a net.

Light shivers off the snow, & down

the stream.  Only a dream.

A 3-dimensional scheme

with vanishing pt. in Providence town.

They chased that woman to her grave,

who danced in Paris on the eve

of the Great War.  Her wave

of splendor... Morning Star’s mild sleeve.

La Mancha waits like Camelot

for the happy restoration

of good ship Madeleine –

Marie’s cosine (bottled in an oak-knot).

1.9.19

OSIRIS-REx & the Bennu-bird

THUNDER-SPOKES

Quiet in the wintry Capitol.

Where father & son, in

the flag-draped coffin,

on the wooden catafalque, are still.

Where son (& father too)

sheds tears.  Innocence

belies its marble semblance.

Upright humility.  High over you,

at night, by day, Polaris glows;

not flags, but shrouded

origins – Bennu-bird

or Horus-ray (Icarus was

here); your ghostlier, spectral

interpretations – secret

resource identifications...

regal, lithic harbors, for a grail

of springy asteroids (boing

boing).  All that Libertà

of space, Lauretta

(almond muse, lithe dancing

branch of J) – inheritance

of every heaven-child

out of a kinder, gentler

Cosmopolis (to come).  Lance

of St. George or of Shakespeare

aiming magnetically toward

immovable light-word

beyond all temporary tyrants, here

                      *

on earth – ever-bright abode

reflected in the clear

Rio Espiritu Santo (where

we return, to be reborn, for good).

O muse of Jonah, in the maelstrom

of the Minotaur... your words

of the sea, rocking OSIRIS

toward... immaculate portals of home!

Your mild ray beaming from the prow

a living microcosm,

shining through the storm

of blinding dread – they do not know!

Mandorla of the sister-dove –

whose realm impends

beyond dead-ends

of Minotaur & twin-taboo... from above

your Dioscuri plant twin oaks,

whose lightning breaks

the chains Time makes –

prophets of the Thunder-spokes!

& from that gemstone casket

of the six directions,

whence four streams dance

breathing through each human heart

innocence & charity join hands

with strength & fortitude

& courage – score a prelude

for a planetful of promised lands.

12.4.18

sealed by kiss

FUGAL DRONE

This May light by the Mississippi.

Evening radiance

of ripeness – deep silence.

Nature can’t be explained, you see –

just felt.  The invisible sustains

the visible.  The unspoken

bee-silk tread, unbroken

dangling between a line of cranes

(fixed image from a coasting film

of tears, pooling in swamps

outside Ravenna dumps).

The retina, the iris-realm –

trim silence of almond canoe

hung up in dim garage

of old Ferrara (green

mirage).  She’s looking for you.

Calling you.  Her light curves round.

Curves round a pyx

hexagonal (X marks

her).  Regal Em, par exemple   bound

for glory in an Amherst cell

her russet star flames

golden dome   her name’s

a plunging eagle’s parallel

O gram of wheat  slanting to water

where the match strikes fire

in Mary’s   mirror-empire

as   furiously spinning   mutter-potter

                  *

echoes one   light-blazing choir

fluke-blinded hearth-power

of black earth-heart   your

milky diamond   from trench-cold mire

The universe is made of this.

A new world beckons now

from almond soil.  Plow

of the old world, sealed by kiss –

recycling topsoil of time

from Raven-Wife to salt

Ravenna – vernal vault

of Juliet to St. Louis sublime.

Moses – padre of Cleopatra,

stepfather of Jessie O.,

veteran of Shiloh...

he might know.  The river mantra

for the quick & dead (a strong drown-

gong) is fugal drone –

peepers in a mud-cone

warbling (like robins in a round).

Across there, from Monk’s Mound.

The planetary plate

is studded with jagged fate –

but we will make a joyful sound,

O froggy clown.  King Charles 3rd

awaits his guilty crown...

Henry is plastering his own.

His throne’s Columbian (a golden bird).

5.15.17

Abe's in the Gulf

TROMPE L’OEIL

Peto, Reminiscences.

Such silent stillness

in a wooden door.  This

repressed memory (forsakenness).

The mottled copper green, absinthe.

Like curdled Liberty.

Coins, ticket stubs... three

paths into the shredded labyrinth

of old glued paper notes.  Almost

erased, some calculations –

sums, additions...

within the mandorla (Abe’s

photo-ghost).  Abe’s playing golf

today, down at the Gulf –

in Florida, with grimacing

elf.  By the marred lake, full of pelf

& flattened tires... distended Brown

Decades of gaslight shadows,

drilled by torpedoes

into stunned prey (pressed down

under demented mansions).  Still

there is another window

clears this reified view

(black coral reef of sacrificial

scars).  The solidarity of living

stones is leaping light –

scaled from a dragon-fight

like trompe l’oeil Thanksgiving

                *

or hologram of humming bird

circling the whisper dome

of spiritual freedom.

Ghost Dance, suspended word

hung from the apex of the tent –

a veil of murmuring linen

around the target sun

of a salty human sacrament

of joy, shipmate!  Ahoy, Jonah!

Cresting the deep wave,

smiling palm-wave

circumference hailing hurrah

for the red white & blue!  Old Glory

spangled by Love!

Columbia, dove

of Liberty... Emancipation story!

So the battle lines are drawn

at last.  Maid Marion –

trampled onto a plane

with Jack & Jackie, by the Lion-

Tooth (orange-tan phony-booth) –

you loose one gray thread

from the bleeding head

of Apollinaire... qui chante... the truth

shall make you free.  The limestone

wrinkles beneath clear streams.

Sovereign of human dreams,

arise like Francis to your servant throne.

2.12.17