where the spring is found

ROBIN HUM

This plaintive spring, like a lonesome robin

piping his distance at the riverbank.

Out of The Tender Land, I think.

The vast bronze river is one serpentine

vibration.  A continental vernal sign,

stretching with catenary smiles

from Lake Itasca to the marshy isles

off New Orleans.  & Hobo sez – all mine.

Dotted with gravity of local bridges,

1132 miles (up & down).

Their almond arcs a pontoon

cascade… cavernous vector of ledges…

climbing toward a flimsiest first whorl

of fiddlehead crowns

at the source of sounds –

where the spring is found.  All shall be well

& all manner of thing shall be well

when the blazing rose shall dwell

at the matrix of clay wheel,

& Thunderbird boom his bronze bell.

& the cry of the mighty bird & the sigh

of the river sound one octave :

unison, played in the key of Love.

For though I sing like angels & men… & though I

have all knowledge – all prophetic wisdom

of stars & planets, capitals

& kings – yet I have not caritas…

I am but sounding brass.  Hear Robin hum.

3.19.20

print on linen by Grace Tagliabue & Phoebe Gould

plague stalks the King

PIN OAK

When the great cities are covered in grass

& nomads return, to forage & hunt

will they remember President Blunt

who saved them from civilization?  Alas!

President Blunt is anonymous too

his towers demolished

where servants once polished

his golden doorknobs, his superb statue.

What happened?  A corona followed him home

from the golf course, one day…

did his nation betray.  Now

his dogie named Money no longer will roam.

Plague stalks the King, going blind

as of old.  Old Oedipus

(our homo sapiens rebus) must

die for the herd (driven into the blind)

& civilization, our slave-driving hub

must await the next trickster

to merge at the mixer

& shatter the wiles of absurd Beelzebub.

Thus time-gravity, suffused with vertigo

informs our animale compagnevole

how pride goeth before a fall.

The voice you heard (long time ago)

out of the cave, whispering low

was your own ghost, human.

Soft-yodeling Robin, on

pin oak branch (before Cahokia).

3.13.20

toward the 4th of Juliette

DOUBLE WHEELS

Lone robin yodeling his evening threnody

plaintive, solitary

on June’s last day

what would he intimate to me?

That summer was immense & infinite

beyond the figuring

of our (almost) unerring

memory of planetary things.  That what

our dreaming signified was plain

(glory beyond our ken).

Tomorrow’s now & then

only a ghost might fold again

into the origami of a labyrinth

of Chartres granite, Mary

blue – like this contrary

stubborn root, trapped in cement

blooming, bleu Ming, nevertheless

along an Ariadne thread

signed (calligraphy by Ted

the Mason) in a matrix of finesse

by its ineffable Makar (aye

laddie, on a tear

shed from everywhere –

like Ocean River, or the Milky Way)

& the stone drones below human hearing

it rhythmous b-flat bass

someplace in Memphis

where Osiris met his fate, shearing

                     *

Love from its neverending source

(like Jackie K’s wing

saddled to her hat thing

flying off convertible, in Dallas).

Was it a Lincoln?  Was it a star

mobile, from galaxy?

Something moving in the clay

rotates like Ezekiel wheels – where

Louis Armstrong melted to el P

& X marked the spot

(Montale’s really not

at home – it’s Giorgio who has the key

to the garage, muttered the lovely

Michal of Ferrara dunes).

We don’t recall these tunes!

Ecclesia et Synagoga cousins be –

double-wheels within wheels, sez

Zeke, in Minneapolis.

Where Juliet was, once

before she lost face... fell from grace...

– how tender floats the human form,

ephemeral!  Until

we knot yon safety spiel –

until that lightning robin find his worm

& like a Caliban, or Jordan weed

begin to mold the clay

into slow-moving roundelay

(American)... Cahokia high meed.

7.2.19

human with human, clay with clay

Bde Maka Ska, 9.1.17

GREEK GALLEY

Now as high summer light ripens

for departure, I remember

how the slight high-wire figure

teetered with tinker shuffle – he bends

his magnetic pole like a long-legged

water-spider, concentrating,

pursuing path P (humming

under his breath) – like a ragged

American robin yodeling, like Francis

the mule on his slight dogwood

perch – so Mayflower would

not sink to sea-floor, so helpless

crowds not tumble from twin towers

to be men not destroyers

his mind moves with those powers

preternatural, avian – showers

of coruscate sparks   from Night Sea

mind   of Okean-reality

heart of   gratitude-mentality

a rustic Thanksgiving   Massasoit will see

to it   along with Black Elk   &

that woodpecker   Thunderbird

a red-streak   flute-word

seeking the common factor   grain

of sand   salt   the personal touch

her hand moves   back & forth

her footsteps   north, south

with his   east, west   in a torch-

                  *

song dream   a melody of Sabbath

silence   invisible liberty

simplicity of   soul poverty

& touch of palm   Grace   have no wrath

So you enter the fiery mind-hearth

of heart-mine   the flame

that never dies   who came

from Sky-Whale   to the earth

Jonah   turtledove   blinding Phoenix

so that disconsolate disunion

of father & daughter be undone

with mother & son   a catenary

parallax   twin for twin   tower

for gate   dark green Atlantic

azure-tangerine Pacific

primavera robin   in woodpecker bower

raven & bluejay & eagle   looking on

all these old threads   a nest

or safety net (good, better, best)

for wounded souls   yearning for dawn

So take firm hold   like little Philippe

the water-spider’s   shaking   handlebar

& skip   like Juliet   there

on the sandy shore   where Okean-Ship

embarks for a feast   of reconciliation

human with human   clay

with clay   like a Greek galley

with smiling eye   aye-aye   cosmopolitan

9.11.17

bebop robin

OKIE NOOK

Sophie’s sunny little birthday balloon

with the starry polka-dots

is losing air now – that’s

how it is with balloons.  Under octagon

of the gazebo roof, like a spiderweb

in golden brown.  The Sacred

Wood was reconfigured –

scarred & scored rough oak nub

rounded to slight chaste coracle.

Apollo’s memory of Daphne

wells near Mississippi

into gnarled pillars (maze or miracle?);

one bebop robin solos from 

an Okie nook, wears

pork-pie hat... & there’s

a poppy (rich red-purple plum)

unfolding down his chest – an origami

floating city, cordial

with accordions, with all

things orbital (inverted harmony,

fresco to Viennese).  An island rose

out of infinite green,

balanced on submarine

turtledove blimps (of caritas);

the loping soul of liberty

sprang from Goodwill

her dancing shoes – & (still

traipsing) turns opal Star of the Sea.

9.13.16

the palm, the fiery gates

PRAIRIE ROUNDELAY

American robin on my fence

I sense you are a friend

& neighbor – here to lend

your orange breast, for salience –

swell-sign of aerial fellowship

in gravid cave-adventure

(blue waves of chicory

pacing old roads, from Boston slip

to San Francisco).  How your edgy

yodeling interrogates

our grubby, wormy hates –

sclerotic, squamous tragedy

of shriveled hearts, rancid hypocrisy!

You diagram with song

a madrigal so strong,

so many voices in emergency

merge into blueprint buoyancy –

manifest (garnet clay

prairie roundelay)

a ship-shape evening constancy.

Mute gesture from crow’s-nest G-ray!

Memory, beyond time

salts a Boethian rhyme-

beat... in quella Roma onde

Cristo è Romano.  Staunch ruddy

steersman indicates

the palm, the fiery gates,

Pacific O... – Eternity! is all his study.

6.7.16

Map of Rhode Island, 1780