bridges of Hennepin County

PROOF-STONE

So many bridges flung across this river

like stitches on a wound –

their heavy iron-concrete bond

knitting a wintry Twin Cities together.

One thing is welded to another,

like the almond in a Venn

design – Cahokian

canoe of koinonia? – out of mother-

clay, spun wide... like risen bread,

or galaxies of diamond fire.

So lights flash over limestone

mire, through night-black thunderhead.

& Hobo, hunched beside the riverbank

is like the shadow of Henry

as Henry is of lowly

Galilean king (his incognito prank)

– as are we all, in that high diagram

checkering light across a dome

in old Egyptian Byzantium

(proof-stone of perpendicular wisdom).

Like Hagia Sophia with a million eyes...

rimming the twin-bent boughs

of swelling arcs (in Voronezh)

where East & West, mud-rings & skies

are melded in your almond lips’ ellipse

& God & Imago

& world & Churnagogue

are sanctified, sealed with a kiss

of peace (pax, agape – Wakan Tanka);

where Rio del Espiritu Santo

whispers I love you so

& Hobo walks with sister Joan (Columbia).

12.3.19

unbreakable chords

HUMAN ECHO

Your nostalgia for the aristocracy

of childhood, Vladimir,

I understand.  So here :

infantile tyrants bear it away

in sappy cerements of innocence.

Galla & her golden boy

& their brief beehive day

drowse in Ravenna, under silence

of mosaic stars; Dante too

sleeps there, still far

from his Firenze mère –

the milky galaxy of midnight blue,

his babble-realm of splendor-joy.

A fluent melody

pours endlessly

from thine ineffable benevolence, Blue J;

a spiral at the cave entrance,

an everlasting sign

of all Creation

(ceaseless, calm, majestic dance).

Those unbreakable chords of Mendelssohn

at the end of the trolley line;

the sound of the violin

lesson, the neighborhood of children...

& the shadow of the Thunderbird

in the immense oak tree

the dark green sanctuary

of Morning Star   dolphin-shepherd

                     *

out of deep-twined memory

by the cistern heard

rose-enfolded Word

out of Ocean’s fond   Jonah-infinity

Instinctive fright becomes aggression,

dominance abets revenge;

since long before Stonehenge

each weak scapegoat endures oppression

& the tantrum of the infant

replicated by depression

each political occasion

filters through both mob & tyrant.

But it shall not be so with thee.

I have no wrath, the Ghost

murmurs; I am the Most

High Heartbeat, mild Invisibility –

indivisible reply

out of the crystalline

& quintessential Union

at the source of Earth & Sky.

I am your human echo, come to be

among you, in my realm

of love, mercy, wisdom –

I am the Nazir, chanting out of Galilee.

& then I saw her, Jonah-Shadow –

wings extending over all

of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Ghost-heart we feel, ghost-bird we know.

7.18.18

ovals over pyramids

WAKAN TANKA

That poor man’s body frozen in the snow

at Wounded Knee.

Big Foot, mistaken for somebody

else (Sasquatch?  Goliath?).  Into

the valley of the shadow goes, Raven.

Wisdom & humility,

twin sisters.  See

how the old chief aches for comprehension.

Forbearance, mutual understanding,

peace.  In short supply

fallen under Assyria –

out in the sticks (Badlands), freezing.

When flour’s ground, small insects too

are crushed.  Bullish philosophy

for young rough riders, bloody

with their ba-ball clubs (Yankee, Hindu).

Boys ape men’s wars for an inheritance.

The monarch, meanwhile, churns

reptile venom – earns

replication in a prairie sundance

all the way to Mexico.  A delicate

sword fight with Judy Hotchkiss

(deadly bees taken amiss

lead Rachel down to Sheol, Juliet)

ends in snowballing massacre

the day after (frozen

conclusion).  Take me away

from these scenes, black star

                *

of harvest moon – bury them in trench

to hide the crying shame

of unquenched hell-flame

(mustard kiln rank with lime-stench).

Eyes frost over.  Hopelessness

of dauber’s art.  Oddly

placed boulders, hardly

balanced on the tip of mysterious

20th century placement & weathering.

Glazed over enough, yah?

Giotto’s all the cry

now, Cimabue – gag order on that thing

hung over the Capitol (New Glum).

Crowds trading places

for a view of the races

at State Fair (Human Bird-Hum).

Awake, Russia!  Make America

Great Again!  Nation

shall lift gas station

against nation – fail, Columbia!

Everything is inside out, & there’s

the Salamanca forest

for recalcitrant peacocks.

Even so.  This grey pebble, this

kamen soldier, simple carpenter

might open just one eye

in palm of clay hand, see –

check the hoary Isis river-

                *

level, placed like a Franklin Bridge

between twin banks.

Through airy arc (thanks,

Saarinen) soars prairie Wind-Wedge

(spooky Manitou’s whole altar).

She’s not a Ghost Dance,

she’s an entrance-trance –

a way of weighing Light Feather

against your heavy heart (soul-

sorrow).  Lake Victoria

or little Lake Itasca

spring to mind – Madonna del

Parto – light-skipping lamp-sheep

traipsing grass mosaic

in shade-sketch (archaic

camera oscura).  Black Elk sleeps

& dreams.  Big Foot & Wounded Knee

& Buried Heart &

Yearning Soul & Mind

lift from that heap of yesterday...

light feather-memory.  Young one

be strong, be good,

be not afraid.  World

law of gentleness is airy crown –

breeze breathing through the universe

bestowing life upon

worried monkeys – sun-

heart of Wakan Tanka (Jesus-nurse).

7.13.17

the melodeon of civil peace

GREEN PALM

This silver light-pull on the black pathway

like a miniature dragon or

sperm whale (grey Minotaur

immured in Ocean labyrinth)... Ariadne

dropped it here for me, maybe

(bowline from safety net

strung beneath Golden Gate,

or strand of hair turned silvery

along the wheel of time & gravity).

In him the root of the matter,

wrote Cotton Mather –

he meant that turbulent sectary,

mild Roger Williams.  An apple root

it was, the legend holds;

clasped in earth-folds,

his buried limbs became sweet fruit

(at Prospect Terrace, where his bones

were laid).  Sweet peace,

he called it; a release

into that harmony among distinctions

Roger christened Providence, & we

e pluribus unum –

a spiritual freedom

planted in magnanimity;

a willingness to mingle tares

& wheat, so infant conscience

tried by experience

find its own starry stairs

              *

& not by force, but gentleness

its ripening prepare

to climb past nightmare

to the melodeon of civil peace.

So gather up stray iris-strands,

Henry.  That self-same

moonlit trail (slim

path between wrath & Rhode Island’s

liberté) was Alighieri’s narrow way

between Imperium,

Ecclesia... low hum

of Jonah-Beatrice (out of the grey

cloud-surf of Ocean River).

Garden & wilderness,

Solomon’s shepherdess...

airy Sophia in Hopkins windhover...

O delicate light-threads, pendentive

on twin pillars, anges

d’orange...  Who arranges

your catenary smiles?  You dive

with her dive, you rise with her rise,

surfacing... Hail, Jonah!

Out of the whale, Jeanne-

Arc!  The mercy in your eyes

– wonder in ours!  A gold mandorla

where the twin points meet –

meld into one – & greet

the Union with green palm... Alleluiah!

6.9.17

of the clay peoples

PEACOCK’S EYE

Path P stretch in six directions

out of Cairo, Huck,

sez Jim – any way you look.

One of them north-south junctions,

I reckon.  There was a labyrinth

of red clay trenches –

dead men in its clenches

like flies hung in a spider’s tent

– heavy that clay, so heavy!

Like the bottom of the sea.

How could a little child be

dancing in such dismal gravy?

She’s Pueblo, of the clay peoples;

they put away wrath before

the sun go down, f’sure.

Lookee there.  & through the peephole

of his fingertips I saw (obscurely

as that garden of Sheba)

a lightning pathway – Sun-Ra

threshing floor – arisen merrily

from ripened Flanders wheat (so

melancholy).  Like Van Gogh

seized with a fury-glow

of happiness... Persephone?  O

yes!  Threading her crane-dance

through a peacock’s eye –

purple Hagia Sophia’s

woolly poncho-swirl (at cave-entrance).

5.24.16

Swords... plowshares

Some ringing lines from the prophet Isaiah (verse 2.4) came to mind today :  

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

Reading, thinking much about the "Great War" lately (as are many people these days).

Note how Isaiah specifies three aspects of war - singling them out for a future renunciation :

1)  the technology of war ("swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks").   This zeroes in on the special obscenity of modern warfare.  We are enslaved by our own mastery of technology : it has become so easy to kill a human being.  To commit mass murder.  The technology we make is our accomplice.

2)  the politics of war ("nation shall not lift up sword against nation").  The nation-state has become a sophisticated, polished machine of power-accumulation.  Power in the Machiavellian sense, for its own sake.  War is a means to this end.  Here war itself becomes the accomplice of centralized human viciousness (our pride, our vanity, our greed, our wrath, our fraudulence).

3)  the pedagogy of war ("neither shall they learn war any more").  Someday mankind will have to renounce the whole panoply of militarism and warcraft.  At present, we limit certain weapons as taboo, out of bounds (chemical weapons, nerve gas, land mines).  Thus we avoid the really difficult renunciation - to do away with the whole shimmering glory of arms and war science.  Isaiah can only project such a social transformation into an undefined future.... On that Day.