egalitarian cathedral

CEDAR HIDEAWAY

In this rough wooden octagon

in the backyard, wrapped

in frayed mosquito nets,

in mid-April, Henry will try again.

The anniversary of Abe Lincoln

rhymes with a shock in Paris.

Notre Dame no longer is

bedecked with lilies for communion.

Entourée de flammes ferventes

Apollinaire, at Chartres

peeks through his bandages

back toward her... makes his lament.

This humble cedar hideaway.

Chaste April light.

The massive stone takes flight

from every heart, with equal sway.

Like a fool in a mystery play,

a cloddish egalitarian

circus, is the Son of Man.

Anti-king, anti-autocracy,

he rides the shoulders of a donkey

(Henry’s stubborn mule

from Berryman misrule

locale) on Muddy journey to the sea;

he’s Jonah, prophet of humility

and poverty, flung to America

to give the motherland a caw –

lift a palladium for Lady Liberty.

4.16.19

ancient West Branch watercolor

CURVE PRONGS

Everything gets more simple

in old age.  Trust me.

Thanksgiving pumpkin pi =

two stone pillars, plus an ample

roof.  Henry Mewl, hee-hawing

NNW (out of Apuleius)

checkmates template Isis 

planted in West Branch (settling

in river-bronze).  Like that watercolor

Mary Negus limned

in high school – skimmed

from unlocked memory (her

Grant Wood brain, a dusty library).

The curve prongs back to earth

west of St. Lou. – Ft. Worth.

Van Cliburn Plumbs to Victory.

I was walking up from the Mississippi

this afternoon, & met

(in Voronezh sunlight)

an ancient babushka, smiling at me.

Thinking of Nadezhda, & of hope...

of Mary Magdalen,

who witnessed Russian

irony in the garden (roped-

off Gesthem – Tsarskoe Selo).

The dream song blinks

until your lighthouse winks.

Wry rosy Providence (all systems go).

1.11.19

those double doors

DEEP RESCUE

Those double doors of the Baptistery

in Florence, where Alighieri

was restrained from returning.  He

might have admired the mastery

of Lorenzo Ghiberti – that golden river

of perfection, surging from

Eden to Gesthemani... some

inscrutable summa of Prime Mover

spoked in parables of heartbreak

& confusion (Miriam, lifting

both hands in agony).  So bring

what you have to a blindman’s break-

fast, to her Thanksgiving feast.

From the belly of a whale

came Jonah – whole & hale

as dolphin-breach (O swift grey beast)!

The linèd forehead of Leviathan

is like your own... therefore

be not dismayed.  Footsore

mule, flinty thin Prophet Stan,

your Livingstone (still at the Nile)

holds firm against the flow

of time – your steadfast glow

upon the brow of them who show.  Smile,

Indigo!  Passage to more than blue!

– these equilibria

of gyroscape... mute

mutualità, below the soil... deep rescue!

5.16.18

Hobo's continental centrifuge

PACIFIC VOYAGE

Hobo, hunching by the great river

in winter’s clamp, peers

like an Okie Okeanos

through the ice-floes’ ripple-shivers –

through the wavy shimmer, down

through faint diffractions

where the light shines

back... a silver mirror-sun,

layering her limestone shells.

A simple madeleine

(stone crumblevine,

gray rock-dove oval) wells

from the giddy stream in limpid echoes.

Raven in Voronezh,

Cautantowwit knife-edge

grips sun in her beak – light glows

like Pearl Harbor in eclipse.

Her lunar lance shall pierce

the mule’s gray hide.  Ears

perk for Jonah’s salty lips

molded like canoe gunnel

to mime Columbia.

Her dove-insignia

frames Sophie-ship – her funnel

rays its calumet of light

above the pyramid

(violent power-grid

of barbed-wire fraud, not quite

                 *

extinguishing that Evening Star

glancing so tender yet

steadfast – a mauve fishnet

looping beneath flame’s Icarus-car).

Hobo is Jonah now, in Ocean River.

The voice beneath the sea

is like a Kievan harmony –

perpetual melody of live-forever;

her flute-throat flickering dusky rings

like rain-drenched iris

round the throne of Isis –

Hagia Sophia in a peacock’s wings.

The river chimes in Hobo’s ears

of many waters, laughing,

crying.  Wingèd seraph,

sister-sibyl, swirl his tears

& yours into the continental

centrifuge (in Center,

North Dakota).  There

the massive gravity of all

Columbia hums into monarch flight –

a raven-transmutation

of infernal nation

to green cedar habitation (night

Pacific voyage of your soul).

Hobo watched the fluttering

lift-off, slowly muttering –

milkweed seed, sail; Ocean, roll.

1.26.17

Leaf to leaf, door to door

OATMEAL BANTER

Light eddying through layers

of overcast gray sky

whispering, simplify.

Willow’s underleaf, lyre-players?

Silver.  Copper-gray the color

of this beech’s mammoth shade,

whose granite roots cascade

light (leaf to leaf, & door 

to door).  Motionless in time-

space, emitting signs

her gray hide underlines

in graphite (stubborn Balaam’s

Hoover-prophecy).  The beech,

the book, will not be moved.

Ink trail of raven-dove...

bare gouache, still ground (beseech

thee, spare thy headstrong mule) –

O break the prison mold,

snow-blind brain-cold!

Where father & son meet (fool

with fool) beneath the malachite

green veins, gray matter

of bran (or oatmeal banter).

Strange personal jade wight –

shade-mutter, everlasting

Sheba.  Clouds gather

overhead – weather

lit thunder (shackle-blasting).

2.4.16

Papa touches down

MAZY SIMONE

Equinox : a bridge between seasons.

Nay, no night-mare;

articulate as horsehair

& as serviceable.  Musique de balance,

équilibre – night & day,

reason & faith.  Of summer,

d’automne... (mordant humor,

luminous grief)... Hey-hey,

giddy-up, Old Paint!  We galumphin’ to see

the Pope touch down, in D.C.!

Strait o’ Columba, maybe –

where turtles kick through tough gray

curves – like a mess o’ limbic pigeons

decorating limestone

from the air.  Everyone

behold her, now – mazy Simone’s

the River Queen.  Like Ariadne

with her golden seine,

or murmurous Magdalen

of sunburnt feet, she will meander

underneath each Maximus

(from Po to Eridanus,

Neva-Neva to the rusty

Don)... O Theseus, she’s mulish US!

Chart the way-way back now, Mary.

Through this labyrinth

of dinosaurs, a kitten’s

coracle will bless – make merry.

9.22.15

Sunk too deep for publication

Still here in Providence, for now... still on the poem (Ravenna Diagram).

The "mule" who appears in Verona has been noted by the bona fide historian Ernst Kantorowicz (legend has it the "foal of an ass" Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday somehow ended up there... where of course Romeo & Juliet takes place... Juliet being also the name of my cousin...)

Sail on, Rolando...

ROLAND WAVES

She hides now, like a bit of clay

dissolved in the Pacific.

& you hear my heartsick

braying, like that sovereign Sunday

mule – foalish, stubborn, somehow

barnless in Verona

(down the trail from Dante

à Ravenna – è finit).  How now,

Ariel?  Where to, Joachim?

At the end of the third aevum –

crowned with the cosmic hum

of a trillion honeybees (Love’s hymn)?

There’s some empyreal raisin

soleil, raison d’état

in my four-legged squat –

stray goose-honks trying a bassoon

for the implicate symphony to come.

Maestro di colori, turtle-

dove monarch of universals...

flame-whisper, omnivagrant kingdom-

Sikh of butterflies... Vladimir’s

Veracruz (shy

brown bird, swampy sigh

of cedars).  Single yarn (gray hair).

Grey sea.  Matière de Bretagne.

Whole whorl in curl

of eyelash (salty pearl) –

Roland waves (to Charlemagne).

8.14.15