part of the main

HEARTH-FIRE

I stepped outside of the quarantine

early this morning (one quiet

crystalline April moment).

A mourning dove, sequestered in a pine

nearby, was practicing, solo (adagio

con molto sentimento d’affetto).

& therefore do not send to know

for whom the bell tolls – Adios, amigo.

We don’t hear them much now, here

as once in Rhode Island.

& it’s hard to comprehend

how time-space telescopes into the mirror

(O my clay-rimmed, worm-riddled heart

& soul)… yet her melancholy

plaint echoes, in me

the solitude that ripens all my art.

We do not belong just to ourselves.

We are part of the main.

I am a half-hitch in a seine

flung from an ark, whose kelson delves

across the Black Sea of the universe.

Borne by embattled star-murmurs,

this pressure on the king spurs

martyrs to out-run the royal curse –

so Socrates & Tommy More, Jesus

absolve the men who killed them;

so their normative love-law anthem

sighs out warm fire into cold sacrifice.

4.19.20

with malice toward none, with charity for all

BIRCH-BEE

                  i.m. MLK

We walk together on a zigzag path

tracing the death of kings

miming crow’s wings

of trickster history – wrath

bursting yellow-orange (balloon

for Apollinaire,

strange signal-flare

scripted for carrier pigeon)

like scars of Mars across an unknown

martyr-soldat (Eeyore-

Verman, smoked as of yore

in mustard-bowl of Bosch-demon)...

Glassed like a pair of broken bifocals

the earth’s blind O

& heaven’s diving zero

mesh in the crosshairs (personals

coulombe).  Shepherd’s last calendar

(yours, mine, ours).

Beyond blank stares

of slate, in Arctic Cimetière –

beneath Jonah’s anchor, tattooed

by Minotaur... one homing

turtledove draws OMO

in red chalk.  Graphite étude

of pensive Milky Way... orant

abysmal honey-beard’s

raven-rose word

lifting light birch-bee ark (aslant).

1.15.17