Good Friday poem

AMBER GLASS

The oak we put into the ground

last fall is budding now.

& on the third day... how?

On this I muse like Uncas Pound

here in my octagonal hut

of scrawny cedar. 8’s

for Easter, numerates

relate – Creation’s è finit;

when the dark goggles of infinity

stood upright (a snowman

merging into green

spring cloverleaf).  Might be.

They say they saved the high windows

in Paris.  Where simple light

grows warm, exfoliate

around the Lady of the burning Rose.

Wheels, wheels... the suffering peoples.

Is Providence intangible?

Life but a negligible

haze, wisping stark silo-steeples?

These sprinklings of amber glass

are darkened with maroon

shadows.  Limbs of someone

hovering so close... a beaming face.

Then I shall know, even as I

am known.  Even as

this acorn opens, grows...

sturdy communion of a melting sigh.

4.19.19

plastic leaves & bottlecaps

SALTY DEW

This autumn wind-chime Sophie made

like El Anatsui (African

weaver spider-man)

from plastic leaves & bottlecaps, tied

with bright ribbons – a key, a table knife,

a silver keychain ring,

a crystal ball... everything

needful for the voyage into afterlife

(October & November, winter

ice).  I hear it now,

an echo from the prow

of gray stone mothership.  Your

Notre Dame of infinite mercy,

villain François.  Or Chartres,

Hen – where light chartreuse

rhymes with sky-blues, calm sea

of sunset rose.  On the scarred floor

a labyrinthine feedback

loop speeds Argo-carrack

by umbilical thesis to Ari’s door.

Arachne, Ariadne...in Rhode Island?

One subterranean Ocean

Stream, Atlantean

where every son of J sails home again

across Medea’s Méditerranée – &

where Medusa’s stone frown

melts, to gleaming crown

of salty dew... grail of compassion.

9.11.18

it's not the actual statue

COTTONWOOD FLUFF

The poem curls out of the soil

of speech, an idiom

of natural freedom –

not the symbolic Rose (Étoile

du Nord) but the actual rambling

pink thorn-petals

pendulous stained glass

welds to parallactic lightning

(baptism of liquid fire).  These two,

the symbol & the thing

itself, twirl interlacing

through the June weather – like Hobo

& actual Providence, the scrappy

burg Rog Williams named.

Free habitation, framed

by metaphysical hope; happy

locution for Rhodos-location.  Only

an Ocean state of mind,

maybe – where you might find

your inner JFK, sailing toward Galilee;

only a craggy Catholic Oak

whose simple fortitude

cools tempers rude, &

opened ears when Blackstone spoke –

lifting his anima naturaliter christiana

to chant that common law

inheres in English & Ojibwa –

sponge of manna-Minnehaha

                *

drifting like green Columbia

or cottonwood fluff –

adhesive, light enough

for grave thread-whispers (ahh...

I understand).  Radiant Naiad

à New York, lifting her torch

for Liberté... hopscotch

of bare feet round hummingbird

maze-vat... such were smoke signals

for a wide corn-dance –

pregnant sum-trance

of orbic humankind, out of deep wells

(perennial realtà).  It’s not the actual

statue, the actual state

but what they indicate

(A-frame of Lincoln-log) – rational

celebrations of Memorial Days...

Thanksgivings (4th

of July an afterthought

of fireflies)... myriad ways

a Union of republican consent

gathers (in common sense,

civility) at the tense

apex of divine intent –

buffalo tepee of Providence,

Manitou table

of justice; peaceable

kingdom, benevolent, immense.

6.7.17

Abba Tor & Eero Saarinen

GREEN EYE

                                i.m. Abba Tor (1923-2017)

If this roof were to fall on my head now

I would die a happy man,

said Eero Saarinen

to Abba Tor (Kennedy Airport, 1962).

The engineer won’t stand on cardboard –

number, weight & measure.

Concrete is dumb.  (For sure.)

It doesn’t know for whom it’s being poured.

Let’s use this requirement to let some light in.

Skylight ribbons through

the Jet Age double-U.

They builded better than they knew.  Someone

whispers like a humming bird beneath

French limestone gravity –

gray shadow cavity,

the leaden heart of black corroded wreath.

The terminal’s long-empty now

(hotel-to-be).  But the sound

of twine cats cradling profound

equilibrium is as a Finnish prow

of voices laboring in harmony –

it lifts a catenary prong

where the cartwheel song

creaks like rust in clay, or an eye

from the bottomland (circling palm)...

Green eye of Liberté

from Providential bay –

Columbia’s rose wheel, her feathered helm.

2.24.17

(NY Times obituary for Abba Tor here.)