what child is this

HOLIDAY MUSIC

The empty duplex is quiet tonight

though not completely silent.

Drumming in the basement –

Khaled rehearsing our old duet.

From different corners of the same planet

immigrants & refugees

hasten to the Twin Cities

as to gemütlich haven or warm magnet.

& history is like a palimpsest of pelts

trapped in somebody’s woods

before there were neighborhoods

or streetlights – only raw scalps, rotting guilts.

When we were that City on a Hill

of our imagination –

special paragon of Creation,

establishing law-&-order by God’s will

on earth.  But it wasn’t so beautiful.

The Magi rode by camel

across a parochial hell

subject to Herod & his trumpets (terrible);

the angels remained invisible, mostly;

& both the Ark of the Covenant

& ironclad Ship of State

came to resemble that drafty, mangy

manger itself.  Where Mary lay

& her shivering baby sighed

& Joseph almost died

of inhumanity.  Hush little baby, don’t you cry.

12.24.19

a thing a thane might ship

MUDDY WINDVANE

The muted pleading of the cottonwoods

meshed in a counterpoint

with myriad redundant

autumn leaves (Chet Baker, Miles).

Sorrow & joy, sickness & health

in a subtle weave of shocks

& echoes (mental blocks

were mystic chords once, Keith).

Beneath your penumbra, Alighieri –

a shadow pantomime.

Fleeting Ravenna rhyme

(Julie on the swing set, Henry

sailing from the limb, laughing).

The logic of your enigmatic

kerygma, then, epileptic

showman?  Merely a line curving

across historical time, into the light

emanating from your heart,

Galilean nazir-sport –

over a chessboard made of night

& day, an abba-rhyme pattern

(pax-bellum-pax, or king-

usurpavenger-prince... a thing

a thane might ship, a Grecian urn).

Bent overlords still shadowbox

musical echoes in refrain.

Mendelssohn leaf-rain

leads me back to Mirror Lakes

                   *

– twin lakes, twin mirrors (eyes

of Oedipus, Antigone) –

Twin Cities ceremony

curing the incest-curse (of Paradise).

You cannot have a child of gods

& men.  Like an albino

freak, or Minotaur

the twin will upset planting periods

& hunting prayers.  The High Priest

tears his robe.  He

says he is the One – he,

he!  Messiah-singularity (least

shall be greatest, last first).  Huh?

Henry earn him tragedy –

dumb spiral out of clay

turn muddy windvane of Columbia.

All about people you know, poetry.

Little Rhody, see –

Rog Williams, Tommy

Gould (Annie Hutchinson too, sadly) –

plumb from Sir Edward Coke

into self-government

by way of Charlie Second

(seedling restoration, kingdom oak)...

til little Providence become

a way of life (like yesterday)

& you reckon the penumbra

yon Lady of the Harbor harbors (hum)

10.28.19

Mediterranean or middle C

WOODEN WHORL

A Mediterranean or Middle

C – see?  Fulcrum

tempered on kingdom

come.  Providential soul-paddle.

Twin clouds of mist will frame

a motionless Morning Star.

Twin mares in a mirror

churn in her glory (lightnin’ flame).

Like Jonahs – brother-&-sister doves

chasing from dawn to dusk

their emerald cornhusk.

A linen cosmos-veil of mazel tovs

lips fashioned like coral canoe

skim swiftly upstream

to your veritas sunbeam –

Shakespearean headwaters (J-blue).

The wooden whorl of the knot-king,

skipping his safety net

around Gennesaret.

The one the crowds exalt... fling

into cauldron of Viking thing

(Odin’s raven, circling

– no, three).  O tree-ring

spiraling up from sea – sing,

C, for me!  The murky river

bottoms out past Memphis,

Cairo... (chi-rho, Isis) –

Mark Twain, sounding... forever.

10.8.18

for National Poetry Day

DOVE-CANOE

America is the greatest poem,

Walter Whitman wrote.

After the gun, the vote

& gunboat diplomacy... hums home.

Beneath sea to shining sea

lies middle C : a note

on the grand baby boat

between red & blue (for harmony).

Purple mountains’ majesty,

inverted in a mirror

lake – not so Superior

this time, but simple, free.

So must our dream end in despair?

The first inhabitants

ordered the elements

on thankful tables – mysterious share

from Wakan Tanka (Thunderbird).

The greatest poem hums

beneath war drums,

discordant malice, noisy fraud;

it is the sound of the earth itself

awash with slow rivers,

where Jonah hovers

in her dove-canoe – a constant Alph

down to zydeco Cajun Zee.

America, l’âme

riche, la mer...

coo-cawing in cloud-thunder tree.

10.4.18

A few flords after long filence

the wind-chime found

FIFE-HUM

The gazebo is an octagon

of peace & quietness

this morning.  A salience,

a turtleshell (on gray-green

surface of a Sunday plane).

By the tumbledown back

fence, buried in black

soil & leaf-remains (rain-

soaked), I found a mysterious

old wind-chime.  Slim row

of silver pipes, bow-

tied to tangle free by turquoise

winged cherub (with turtledove

nestled against his chest,

like a kid’s cherished

carrier pigeon).  Bell-tones hove-

to in the air, by the furrowed brow

of weathered cedar gazebo-

door.  We’ve all passed over

the red, & through blue forest now

ring the tiny silver seraphim;

your carmine car is here

from emerald whispershere

cry the whirl-a-wings, that skim

in ferrous rings’ unmoving flight

above elongate coracle

of almond lips...  One coal

glows from steep well of night

                 *

like North Star in vast Ocean State

– one double rose wheel

swelling out of two – seal

of Elohim! – Love to consecrate;

the union of the subtle One

who hums through everyone

across creation – sun-

dance of manifold children, spun

by tread of Ariadne-gold –

maize ring of Chartres

frisbee’d to Paradise

atop oblong St. Louis mound

by monks’ naval arc-sheepfold.

As in shady Ravenna once

forecast of Providence

uttered by clay beseeching, rolled

from dusty lips toward dark mosaic;

fast prayer of Alighieri

bent by Beatrice

via sigh of starlight...  On a windbreak

east of Voronezh, quick beak

of finch-tuned Mandelstam

corrals her sweet I AM

within a limpid rill of spring – a streak

of black-gold monarch wings

slant toward akme

of octave solidarity –

whose fife-hum resurrection brings.

7.9.17

birthday chords

Mayday

The octave overcomes all wrath

Blues for James Cotton

Ring Those Bells, Columbia

message to President Donald Trump

Dear President Trump,

Just thought I'd share something we here in America call "harmony".  Harmony is a concord of different notes - "e pluribus unum" expresses the same idea. We don't try to hate & attack & control others, because we all come from the same place, we're all brothers & sisters. Life is good. We're all immigrants & pilgrims in this world.

Sincerely,
Henry Gould

 

begin the Beguine

MINOR 7TH

There’s a baby high chair in the river

made of sycamore wood

(from Sycamore St., in old

Providence) – you could flip it over

& make a little car of it.

But the Miss is frozen solid –

can’t break the mold,

flow thru, maybe.  Love-seat

slung low.  The mood’s on Henry

sometimes, to be sittin’ there

– like Neptune, or Great Hare

the Leapin’ Dauphin (Huckleberry?) –

beyond the marina, where all the waters

congregate.  With Jeanne-

So-Dark of New Orleans,

the Cedar Queen (through the main door,

là.  La-la).  Her Rio never ends,

her rain is circulating

even now, hump King –

no matter which boar hounds, pretends.

Henry’s babble splinters echoes

down the ice.  Yet the flute

welds sheepskin & galoot

into a chord both Greeks & Hebrews

play (sustained diminished minor

7th, maybe, on

Ojibwan theremin).

Siddown – begin the Beguine, sailor.

2.3.17

Lament for the Makers

Dream Walk

These Are the Times

Roll on, America

Blue Planes

More bardic prep. Just getting started. folks. You can read the poem here.

in Red Wing

JOY-DIALECT

The great apes crouching toward the east

to meet the light

Cautantowwit in flight

southwest, southwest (a raven-feast)

echo the caw-caw over Noah’s ark

(breadcrumbs for Elijah).

The future is for Jonah

or for Jeanne to bear (as oak

from acorn weathers Thunderer,

Earth-Shaker).  From these

enormous clay crocks

of Red Wing pottery (grain elevator,

stoneware casque) one Blue Morpho

or ochre-black Monarch

skims toward blind Psyche-

park (houseboat for mosey-Hobo) –

when Hero rises from the womb

of Nile or Mississippi

like Huck, like Jim (she

will be free!) across the loom

of frozen rim (Troezen or Petersburg).

In Red Wing, Frances Densmore

heard the drums pour

rhythm underneath the river – bug

slant like water spider’s perfect

pitch-black whispering

through tympanum – sing

beyond ice-frame (joy-dialect).

11.1.16 

Frances Densmore exhibit, Goodhue County Historical Society Museum (Red Wing, MN)

music of ordinary things

AERIE-FEAST

Music of ordinary things...

happiness at work,

when things go OK –

when the work is good, & skill brings

flowers to fruition; then at dusk

heading home, to family

& friends, where kids play

beneath a sturdy roof (hard task

fulfilled with courteous precision)...

plain telos of humanity,

pleroma of reality,

continuum of beauty’s diapason.

Grandfather’s house of rusty brick

along the River Road –

an engineer’s abode,

who loved an opera (Elvira’s cheek)...

One high lone raven corkscrews toward

the Pole.  This pillager

is Eli’s forager –

his black-hole fleece ties ragged

knots, makes nest for bread & wine.

Look how the prophet-priest

exalts his aerie-feast

where Time peals to a finish line,

B-flat – è FIAT... è finit.

Apollinaire smiles

in the wings – miles

overhead his plane lifts (azure, infinite).

9.28.16