Hermione's return

MAYPOLE CALCULUS

The park bench by the Father of Waters

is Hobo Henry’s throne.

Where he comes to his own

like Leontes (late to his daughter’s

recovery, Hermione’s return).

That sidewinding father

plays hide-&-seek – with another

voice, another fleece.  Like someone

you met once, on the road to Emmaus

or St. Petersburg – sly

Queequeg, tricksy Bluejay...

warbling red Robin in burnoose

of raven-ink.  His tattoo labyrinth

the cave he trails from –

a smoky-flutey hum

folding the whole into a ninth

symphonic inning (end-beginning).

This personal boomerang

widens your gyre, bright Milky-

Zed – like a shadow slowly shrinking

toward your noon.  Come back again.

Global res publica

out of Exodus.  A prairie

equal sign, Mississippian –

grass salience across the river (Monk’s

Mound) still reminder

we were slaves once, here

(Dred Scott & Gateway Arch plunk

                     *

side by side).  Slaves kept by others,

& slaves to ourselves.

Whose arrogance resolves

into a Minotaur of rival brothers

(orange vs. black – harsh prison stripes

mirrored across scarce

monarchs, dense cedars).

Vlad in Kiev?  One of them types.

Or Nabokov, in camouflage.

A Frisco safety net

might bolt this Nut

who stretches out her flamande bridge

into an arch, over the Nile –

osprey transfigurement

of J to fundament

(her spirit flaming into smile).

This late romance, Leontes-Hobo –

some Pygmalion’s design –

lifted La Paix from Brooklyn

mud, with Liberté (moss-emerald glow).

Her incarnation of a crocus rose

& spun gold gyroscopes,

kalimba-periscopes –

around a Maypole calculus

of loving fingerprints, & penny-clues.

The Earth, in shadow of

one flighty Jonah-dove...

your arc of fellowship (King of the Blues).

5.1.17

 

rowing to Kiev

RAZOR BEAK

The human family of human

families – clay

honeycomb array

in earth-colors – aims for a zone

of radiant plenitude – sustained

chord from a horn of plenty,

hived in community –

a milk-&-honey land, ingrained

along a cedar path of goodness

clear as winter air

warm as Apollinaire

chanting his biplane with finesse

Parisienne.  A Spirit of St. Louis

circling the blazing crown

of Liberté floats down

into the eagle-nest of Chartres

whose rose rim complements that Gate

of soaring human freedom

anchored to the thrum

of one great river’s beating heart.

So pictures flicker in the stream

of Mississippi dream

for one forlorn sunbeam

or hazel-mote, her gypsy scheme...

one footloose soul, one rambler

who would be gone from jail

before the frozen hail

of Hitler-Stalin-Xi-Putin (& gambler

Kim Jong-un) congeals into one

mammoth concrete hulk

of tearful despot-sulk –

one massive Man of Unknown

Snowjobs – Don the Golden Duck-

&-Coverling, the Beast

who gives offense the most

& smears the human face with muck.

So honchos of the earth lift up

their horns, a little while;

they cannot reconcile

their pride with that ineffable fop

who spins the elegant galaxies

here to infinity

              *

right from eternity

& lifts the heart to ecstasies

of fellowship & harmony –

the sparkling of justice

mercy   righteousness

high paths of gentle charity

Saturnian rings of human union

knotting the universe

within one Paradise

plainsong (trompette marine).

The turbid tumult of the beaten-down

rattles the reeds, troubles

the swarming crows – bubbles

explode – all the high-flown

rhetoric disintegrates under

the trampling of grass

by panicked herds (alas).

& yet there is another thunder

gathering in clouds above the oaks,

beneath the sea – low hum

of some beehive continuum –

sun-wheel, whose fiery spokes

feather to wings of Thunderbird –

enormous golden shade

whose raptor-beak’s a blade

of dragon-prow – Norsemen’s weird

serpent-egg on river-tree

sailing to Kiev, now –

St. George’s silver plow

upturning soil to poetry

salting the roots of tyranny

to shrivel them at last

beneath a trumpet-blast

of global human sovereignty –

the almond salience of a union-dome

bright coins of humanism

ringing a cataclysm

for every fraudulent kingdom

& every despot on the earth.

This eagle’s razor beak

has just begun to speak –

a tender rain, wisdom & truth.

1.14.17