when the players are packing up

OFF PLYMOUTH

In the beginning was the Word, &… there is

never an end to the writing of books…

the Gospel according to Borges.

Ouroboros (in a whirl of discourse).

Hamlet with Mousetrap shattering the frame

cannot escape his web.

The python in the grass… aye

there’s the rub (poison in the game).

& yet a fresh wind flows off Plymouth

of a morning… Mayflower

or Normandie.  Your

sister-dove Hermione fluttered her moth-

wings, molted to monarch, starry swallowtail;

the Constitution of your dream

became a Greek trireme (☧)

shrouded in sunny spray like fiery hail.

& at the end of the song, & the late Romance

when the players are packing up

when the ferris wheel slows to a stop

& flickering stars turn in remote silence

then the word grows simple   salt

shines in its Voronezh barrel

your father Truth walks parallel

beside you   & from a dim-lit vault

in that Ravenna sepulcher, a Jordan

river-god accompanies the Dove

the Baptist solemnizes Love

on Earth   anoints a lowly serving-man

4.23.20

in the Grand Army of the Republic

CLEAR BREEZE

Hank limps onward, like a lost private

in the Grand Army of the Republic

through swamps above Nilotic

Memphis – or plug of gneiss granite

broken loose from Superior shoreline

(euphoric azure of sea air

lifting over the spare

curves of rusted railroad iron).

We carry so much indifferent amnesia,

sleepwalking across Earth.

A measureless unplumbed worth

overshadows our shadows (ecclesia

del girasole… sunflower’s rotation

in the silence of Ravenna

backwater).  Antenna-

headed cave figures, in Papillon

foreshadow these elongate, lantern-

eyed hierarchs of grace –

a shadow ladder, on a base

of basalt (box-within-a-box of Lincoln

logs).  A matryoshka puzzle toy

from Kiev, or Constantinople;

an emerald imago of all people

in mild irises of Maximus (old boy-

martyr).  Matrix, crosshair lens –

vertigo of San Francesco

whorled to the point of zero,

razor-sharp.  Star of St. Stephen’s,

                  *

or the sea.  Is shadow-hero

of millions of shadows, round-

about… perceptible ground

or incarnation of your own heart’s

broken-down ego (melted to music).

Is Jonah of your ocean,

Columba… is feminine

Adonai of Morning Star (mystic

bloom, afloat over Cahokia).  Is

Gateway steel of your

clear breeze, Superior –

Osiris to your adamantine Isis

(Psyche-Amor).  In Ford Theatre

the violence comes to a head.

A Service of the Dead

melds Abraham to one frail butterfly-

phantom – one solidarity of soul.

Whim’s monarch, hoboing

from Mexico, to spring

the news… Pinetop’s True-Loving Honor Roll.

In the heart of the heart of hearts

where all the waters start,

we’re no longer apart –

little acorn coracle sea-charts

mark the almond center of the diagram.

Here the luminous shadow

smiles out of clay wheelbarrow,

& love never ends (warbling I AM).

2.11.20

etched in vernacular

BEEHIVE WITNESS

Dante’s rambles round the tamarack swamps

outside Ravenna.  Beached

hulks of Byzantium reach

toward the sea.  Inside, smoke-lamps

phosphoresce hieratic grandeur

(kind bovine gaze of Empress,

Emperor).  Alighieri’s

impressed – ecco l’ora serale

in those green sheepfold meadows

where Time does not run.

He pursues his martyrion –

Crusader grandfather, circle of Mars.

He etches in vernacular his answer

out of deep parish history

to the welded Roman panoply

(Arcadian melody, Virgilian whisper).

I am a scribe who when Love speaks

hastens after, hearkening

noting everything down.

I haven’t heard from Bea in weeks.

I remember lips set with a grim reproof.

Down at the borderland

(Texas to Samarkand) –

Coatlicue, Tezcalipoca... beetling roof

of squalling Raven years.  Esta

su iglesia, Henrique?

She’ll be coming like Elijah,

not Europa, now (beehive witness).

6.24.19

woodcut by Mary Ravlin Gould

dialect of high & low

CLAY NAVEL

Literature might be political.

The dialect of high & low,

the pyramidical Pharaoh

& Erich Auerbach in Istanbul...

slaves muttering (familial)

athwart the exaltations

of regal Lion-Suns

& River-Moons (extra-terrestrial)

their jocular contra-dance lingo.

Dantean, obsolete

vernacular (obsidian);

mosaic featherweight, grave Galileo.

Everything formed from nothing... out

of a pinhole in the universe.

Clay navel – Osiris hearse

called up by current, cattail flute.

Whorls of tree-rings mantle each mortal eye.

Isis in Iowa,

Blackstone of raven-sigh –

Cautantowwit, under the Milky Way.

The tacit origin.  Your motherland,

O King.  Incipient

restoration, air apparent...

transparent equilibrium (beatitude).

Near the steel vault of St. Louis.

In the seine of the fishermen,

over the Mississippi.  Sign

from tree-logs, Jessie Ophelia... always.

6.23.19

I have a dream

PLAIN CLAY

I have a dream, sang the buffalo-

voice, I have a dream –

when the will to redeem

lifts a heavy soul, bent low

amid murky murmurs of lost

innocence, out of the lake

of fire (nightmare). Take

my hand, come to this Pentecost –

harvest of kid from lambent cave

(wick drawn from water

up to Pharaoh’s daughter –

firefly corn-blaze, flickering in nave).

Lean petrified wraiths gaze, wingèd

through Ravenna gloom.

Dante walks home,

his lesson fin (carving INTREPID

into night’s milky ark of galaxies).

A net resolves to surf;

a seine makes common turf

out of plain clay – paradoxical

Francisco-mule, clip-clop clumping

until he climb the octahedral

keystone of the cathedral –

orange Chinese lantern, miming

remote & lonely lighthouses

(Rose Island Light, for

Narragansett raven-shore).

Sun in your beak (Cautantowwit’s).

8.28.17

on the snow path

MOSAIC WELL

On the snow path between bridges

the sun squints beneath

clouds; twin hawks unsheath

talons, whirl over river’s edge

(aerial wrestle-dance).  Winter sky

slows the flow down,

frozen.  Last windblown

oak leaves sail the bone-dry

ground.  Yet in another age

innocent gold honey

fed the sons of Zebedee

from almond lips of Nazir-sage –

his eagle-crow, accompanied

by flutes & turtledoves.

The knot of shackled loves

in your Knossos-heart are freed

when crystalline snow-light, like salt

shines through the octagon

of your mandorla – son

& father, sister mother & daughter melt

into one mead-measure of fire

& the smile of Manitou

mirrors an arc for you –

primordial apse of Apollinaire.

Whorled vortex of the shepherd’s roam

reveals a human face

in that holy place –

mosaic well from kingdom come.

12.8.16

ineffable mosaic sky

CLOUD-FEATHERS

The air so brilliant & clear today

beside the Bronze Age river.

The railroad bridge hovers

over its reflection – a light play

of diagonals, like water-spiders

on a pond, or cloud-feathers

above the Jordan, tethered

to a steadfast figure (Jasper’s

orant mariner, circumferencing

gray sea with shady palm).

That chanting shepherd, calm

beneath an indigo wheel of blazing

stars... one cheerful face beaming

from the medallion

in Classe (Apollinarian)

under darkened wooden ceiling

of abandoned ship, beached in pine-

swamp, at Ravenna’s edge.

Mere icons of a human pledge

so simple, local, omni-Byzantine –

ineffable mosaic sky

where Love bends waves

to lift us from our graves

into a metamorphosis   kind Aye

above halo of tears   you streak

with serpentine arches

agios   agios   agios

one river-rainbow   in an eagle’s beak

7.29.16

granite made of air

MOSAIC INTERIOR

Hobo sets his sights on Ocean Sky

the cloud-boats drifting

stately, aquamarine

high-masted spinnakers go by

The rusty syntax of the railroad bridge –

necklace for a queen

Romano-Byzantine.

Galla Placidia, maybe... blown to the edge

of warlord chaos, courtier intrigue;

guarding son & heir

with the pale gold hair

(who will not see the Soo Line zigzag

into the forest, north of here).

The mosaic interior

night-blue with stars –

her mausoleum, like an eggshell ear.

Sea-light filters through pinholes

of gold.  The grey matière

a granite made of air

hides pigeons, ring-dove souls

within its manifold (octahedral

catacomb).  Even

Hobo finds his kin again;

the smile of cousin Jeanne will roll

a tensile thread out of the maze

of time & circumstance –

her light ghost dance

where mountains bloom (sheep graze).

7.7.16

Dreamsong heads downstream

FRAIL SKY

The sheep in the mosaic, in Ravenna.

Ravens in the scroll,

in the temple (Emanu-el,

off Morris Ave).  & in Siena,

Lady Pax, lolling like Jenna

on the couch, beside

Justitia.  Wide

open, now, your Burchfield scena –

wind, grassland, heartache.

What brung them blues, O shy

bird bro?  Frail sky

disintegrates in Birdy’s eye, beak

cradling bright penguin soot of Man.

Handing his crozier

gently to its heir

a sheepish Father Also-Ran

smiles, mild as any lambkin

Pontifox.  Herder-

gypsies circle ferder

into desert places.  Julius Putin

frescoes chimp dominion, over

stalag mites hiked to hell –

old human story (well,

there goes the antelope).  Clover

for meadows, cottonwood for bison...

Amaranth? – or pick

your poison, Hobo Dick.

I’m rippling a dreamsonge Union.

2.29.16