ice-breaking spring

SMOOTH FAN

This simple cup of Red Wing clay –

I thought it might be cracked.

A thick dark zigzag tracked

the rim.  Some dragon gone astray?

Quickening lightning, heavy thunder…

power of ice-breaking spring.

The bursting-forth of everything

in moss-green gold & violet splendor.

Or something darker, circuiting its wheel.

Cold-blooded Serpent, shattering

Anansi’s web (her glittering

fishnet, awash with dew)… to steal,

to kill.  Ouroboros-pelt of power

peeled from its fountain (O

omnipresent sweet communion

threaded like planetary Venus-flower).

The poet’s voice lurks with the refugees.

Exiled flint mirror, casting back

the shadow of one seamless lack

of liberty, justice – life’s guarantees.

It is a tool, a sharpened raven-knife

polished in Voronezh.

That river-town, at edge

of steppe.  O Evening Star, O sister-wife…

The river sways its coppery smooth fan

from forest spring to Okeanos.  One

willowy limb of oaken

mast… grounding the flash where it began.

4.29.20

come here, baby Minotaur

SEA-SAND

Love is the end & the beginning.

Cave-artists in Sulawesi

drew pigments from red scree

for their wild pigs, dwarf buffalo (zing

go the arrows of the sacred hunters,

therianthropes).  44,000

years in burial mound

(palm-prints on wooden posts for pointers).

Desire in soggy adolescent clay

molts to perversity

or rises to chaste clarity;

smiles of mothers & fathers slay

the stony-hearted Minotaur

with a burl of soft air

(light for the maze-lair).

Love circles back to where you are.

Come here, baby Minotaur,

you’re going to dance with me.

Concrete comes from the sea-

sand; this milk is from a star.

I’myeh spirit helper, Jonah Raven.

Take this clay, spit

into your hand, & roll it,

mold it to your eye.  There’s Ocean-

Ouroboros, glowing in the deep.

That’s Milky Way, that’s

Morning Star... your heart’s

a coracle, Cordelia (wake beyond sleep).

12.12.19

until this firefly leaps

BLACK SWALLOWTAIL

The flickering faintness of a hobo fire

grew steadier as Henry drew

near.  All for you,

muttered Hobo.  Your Falstaff, sire.

The heart’s a cracked & splintering

toy drum, he droned...

Henry just groaned.

He felt pangs of fibrillating

Providence – inviolate rose island

in the hearthland of the sea,

where what might have been might free

one Bonnard fête from tragedy (a sand

mandala, slipping under the wave

of pewter experience).

Imperfect sense is

normal, Hobo (hustling to the grave).

Look at that butterfly in Whitman’s weeds,

Henry!  Monarch, Hobo?

No – black swallowtail.  So

azure constellates, where black clay bleeds.

Ouroboros universalis – until

this firefly leaps... a spark

your gemstone soul to mark –

the pure gold’s melting to fulfill.

                   *

Like a gyroscope, the soul balances

on threads of conscience

& the normal universe

awaits your restoration, Hobo Eli sez.

7.23.19