Dark Lady, mayhap

BRADY SEZ

Near the headwaters of Mississippi

this silver-gray sinkhole

fixed as North Pole

in frozen vortex.  Photography

captures the chill nether-life

of Lethe (Brady sez).

A trestle-bridge passes,

rusty in the distance.  A pocket-knife

of cottonwood unfolds where innocent

Ophelia submerged at last,

last fall.  Her ballast

was a blast of wrath – so violent...

collateral damage of masculine panic?

Mayhap.  Dark Lady

(all Berryman’s study)

of minstrelsy... America’s Titanic

or J. Johnson’s grace (we don’t ship

no coal) exudes black milk

for wild Melchizedek

nested in Erica-barge (molto largo trip).

Jonah-Osiris was a dove, Columbia.

Like a Burchfield winter

or Grant Wood choir

she might emerge, Jesse Ophelia –

she might molt into an Ariadne’s Crown

stars shining down

around your bulbous clown.

Jaybird of Eli, couched over Washington.

2.18.19

one last hurdle, Amelia

DANTE CHAIR

The gazebo’s grime-filmed mosquito net.

The black chain-link fence

in backyard Providence

climbed by Clem (mock-orange? Nyet).

Elegant quincunx in Cyrus-orchard.

Natural calculations

for dames in Netherlands –

to sieve the flux of spacetime (hard

homework).  Oxidized old photographs

curl to brown negatives.

A lime-warp cosmos

rolls up like a scroll of epitaphs

on fire.  So memory seems to curdle

too.  Gödel’s fetal pose

(knot of incompleteness).

Here’s the Pacific! – one last hurdle,

Amelia.  Archival snapshot

lost at sea...  your back

on deck, maybe?  Ack-

ack survivor?  Unknown soldier?  Dot

gone a-whaling vast expanse,

revived in some albumen

album.  Icarhea, return –

amaze us.  Dad is dead.  All US

mourns you, lass.  Jesus the airman

in a Paris dream   floats

through rainbow dust-motes

light checkmate   first the grain

                *

then the ear   then the grain

of wheat   in the heart

of your ear   lost art

of flying flute   solo   Dakota plain-

song   Black Elk   pilot-fish

naturally Christian

(more so than mission-

school)   so dream your spirit-wish

when the brutal tide of inhumanity

recedes   we will stand

by the shores of Mini-land

bullets   baby hummingbirds   no-see-

ums now   old Green Man chair

of Old Man North   unseen

now too   copper-sheen

bright mold of Liberty   still there

like curule seat of Caesar (Jules)

a Dante chair   Mom spied

in the PX   at Salvation Army

& dragged back home   April Fools!

It’s very rocky   in Armenia

an Abyssinian ark   sleeps

in Paul Bunyan steeps

a Tuscan nurses   meek Elephantea

with yellow ivory   fantasia

folk tales of the sun

shining   for everyone

through rose-glass coracles (acacia)

7.12.17

Sunset (Mississippi River at St. Anthony Falls)