rivers keep on rolling

BRIGHT SALT

A clear day toward Thanksgiving.

Light on slight mantling

of snow, along the slanting

Mississippi (wave of returning

gravity into the mouth, the Gulf).

There is a magnet

in the heights, a great

Pole Star, that rotates over Beowulf,

Black Elk; there is a matrix point

for all our muttering,

for crazy flotsam drifting

to the sea... a limestone font.

A child climbed from a light-lapped cave

along a spiral trail –

a thread from beryl-burial

to emerald grail (one sea-swell wave).

Beneath grey-wingèd clouds she rose,

called forth by whisper-smoke

of Earth’s holm-oak.

Her name is Imago, her echo flows

into the planetary sarabande –

stately processional

(spring, summer, fall)

to Morning Star, at seasons’ end.

Her name is Liberty, she rides the prow

of every soul – bright salt

of gaiety – the glistening vault

of Ariadne’s crown gracing her brow.

11.21.16

a little more from My Siena :

10

                         The Lord hath created a new thing in the earth.
                         A woman shall compass a man.
                                                        Jer. 31:22


 
In the quiet womb of what shall be
The estranged, homesick word flies back to its nest
Of abiding peacefulness.
                          Alighieri and
Ezra circle home again, through the door
Beneath a bookstore's rocking sign
For Wisdom (coracle) - touched
By patient, penetrant
Forgiveness - lifted
From the jaws of Leviathan.

 
The womb absorbs their eccentricity.
An unexpected equilibrium takes hold.
The empty wind and the words it carries
Ruffle the water and reflect unspoken things.
What was justice for the High Commissioner
Becomes a pathway for the downcast immigrant -
That baby refugee, whose throbbing wail
(Still untranslateable) will parse
The future tense.