radical carrot

PACIFIC GATES

All the dry seeds go back

into the clay, like these

on their wand of wheatgrass

(like a gold cattail against a black

park bench).  A nut curves over the sky

for this brown recluse (Hobo

on his own West Branch).  So

a midnight Isis took her milky way –

a stone skipped into Petersburg to say

all things are equally beloved

in the chaste eye (earth-

shaked adamant Columbiad of Liberté).

The hungry crowd rages for opportune

justice – the pumpkin man

bugling Promised Land –

& like the ravenous orange trumpet-vine

we cling to dreams of Mendelssohn

& good old days...  So let

the radical carrot

root deep in Galilee – a love so alien

& corny, only Beats & donkeys

out on Frisco Bay can see;

for you just as for me –

as for Akhmed, Aunt Bea & Weldon Kees,

each everyone – this equity applies.

Let go the superflux!

yawps Lear, & let the buck

stop here – behold Pacific Gates arise.

11.10.16

the angry clown is not your father

HEAVY THINGS

If we look once more at your Topsfield

Aquinas-map, Dante –

that earthy horn of plenty

floored by starry sarabande (sealed

fan of luminous phenomena)

the heavy things of Time

rehearse the Salem crime

with simple weight of rigid clay –

ice-cold, stone-cold, bereft of life.

The line sags from the bridge;

the daughter of a lost age

droops, off-balancing (soul-grief).

Quantum quirks of spooky action

powder another image

for displaced rage

into the time-funnel... dissatisfaction

with oneself provokes a personal despair.

We do not know who’s there.

Halloween is in the air;

brown leaves congeal to pumpkin hair,

the angry clown is not your father

anymore.  O Juliet,

the phony craven despot

crafted no safety net... look further.

A rippling of seashore memory

brings grey gulls to sleep.

The peacock’s eyes gaze deep

as Argo... hold her now, Hagia Sophie.

10.21.16

like Don in Key West

milkweed palms

DOUBLE-DECKER

Hobo lounged by the great gray Ocean

River, his old hide detached

a little from his mind,

like Don in Key West, his one-

time winter host (at the Q Motel).

Distanced a little from the

whitecaps, red & blue,

that molder to a stucco frieze of Hell

sometimes.  He remembers wild violets

that peek beneath gray toes

of an elder copper beech, whose

crown shades Providence; those roots

drill deeper than the black & white

of shaky party platforms.

Down beneath worms

mining resentment & indifference, the bite

of greedy centipedes, the slugs

cold as a winter street

in Minneapolis, whose neat

chewing fattens themselves alone (bugs

do not think about their neighbors).

Whose murmurous gray arms

have framed the milkweed farms

of metaphysical Hope, that anchors

Roger Williams’ canoe –

Love’s almond chariot

that smiling Faith built

out of flocks of can-do

monarch wings, green palms

circumferencing the gray

scallops of yesterday –

twin limestone radials (emblems

of spousal harmony, e pluribus

unum).  Whose tap sinks toward

the center of the gourd,

the hearth Love stokes, wells tears...

& where a voice from her grey mirror

sang in Hobo’s ear –

Behold the Platonic Year

revolve at last, aboard my double-decker

Greyhound!  When the game of suits

& spades & royal clubs

gives way to hearts purple

& ruddy diamonds – twin 52s

orbit an orange origami octagon,

one Chinese lantern, standing

in the night garden – bring

Hobo to the table, then!  It’s done!

He pondered pumpkin murmurings,

& mooned there, by the muddy

banks.  The breeze of poetry...

only a feeling (sighed).  Our burdenings

borne by that humble muse, whose trust

in some deep loving cloud

grey Manitou’s abode

will wave back (Noah’s buoyant crust).

8.15.16

Hoboland

October through a giant copper beech

The day approacheth, just a few weeks from now - I must be leaving ye old Providence, heading west to Minneapolis.  Walking around this windy overcast morning - gray skies, gray hair, gray world - thinking of the bark on a great gray beech tree, & the gray stone of churchyards, & the grey-eyed wisdom of Athena-Sophia (you might say)... all these sempiternal things (you might say)... & of Jasper Johns' gray series, & of the strange old gray painter crouched in a gray streetcorner, in Antonioni's Ravenna film, Deserto Rosso (was it Dante?)... & so all these grays blended on this gray day, as I remembered Edwin Honig, who had so much to do with my poetry life here in Providence... & Edwin's terrific short poem "November through a Giant Copper Beech" (you can find it in at least one of the editions of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry).

Edwin's poem is about passing things, & things that are steadfast through time...

I got into a college (Brown) on the strength of some high school poems.  & stuck around here, writing on & off, for 45 years.  I just learned a few days ago that a poem of mine has been accepted for publication in that venerable American institution, Poetry magazine.  So maybe something at least has come of it all - so many wayward years in Roger's city-state, his "refuge for troubled conscience"!

PUMPKIN MAN

                                   in memory E.H.

This windy gray October day,

fat robin camouflaged

(hoodie?) in dogwood’s

rusty green... & then the great gray

beech I passed this morning (Slater

& Lincoln).  Elephantine,

primordial, in motion

still (old pre-Socratic critter)...

Edwin’s tree, his 100-branching

crown – the graying King

of Gray, still whistling

to Even Dove, down never-dying

Dolphin Way (led by leaping sparks

into Ravenna).  O patient

rude dream-sponge – intent

to wrestle safety shroud across stark

span! – your International Pumpkin Man

lit from within (warm

orange flame)... No harm

shall come to thee, my child – listen!

In a corner of a lumber yard

one sharp-eyed old saint

(framed by gray paint

cans, wagon) waves palm upward

toward the dark sheep-door, just

over his shoulder – where

one candle shivers fire.

An endless jet, he whispers.  Trust.

10.9.15

Beech tree on Slater Ave., Providence