by John Gould's oak

ANCIENT MELODY

The air so clear, & the evening moon

a bright silver penny

as in the children’s story

walking along my mother’s old lane

(River Road).  Looking back through time

toward rust-bronze Penny

glinting in the well… you & me,

sweet riverbend friend (Rose I. William).

On middle C, in common time, imperfect

we will tap the ivories –

some Memphis honey blues

for Milkman, gone today (perfect

in charity).  I remember how we clung together

in the greenhouse, long time gone.

Now distance is the quarantine… yet

only temporary, Pen.  We’ll meet somewhere

by snowflake relativity – that Providence

where every soul has dignity,

disintegrated from the sea

of Ocean River (Osip’s salience – a

wee raznochinets bubble of pure silvery glee).

The sky.  So clear tonight.

Transparent memory.  A light

chord lingers in the heart (soul liberty

the ancient melody).  Freedom, equality,

respect… humanity.

Like Newport’s Jeremy – buried by

John Gould’s oak, in Hemel Hempstead (age 90).

4.4.20

the tender green

INDIAN GRAVE

The tender green fans out in sprays

now, over the trees

by the river.  Hobo sees

a little rise, like an Indian grave (Scythian?)

through cottonwoods – a salience.

Here Mrs. Sippy Nile

meets the 4 Grail

streams – Po (Eridanos),

Avon, Neva, Voronezh.

The raven is a dove

by day.  The paths of love

merge in a lattice-nest (collage

of gray clouds in circumference

of radar palm) where Jonah,

from the salty eye

of hurricane, flutes wholeness

(restoration).  My simple stick man-

woman, caved-in

charcoal Job, has been

the universal algorithm – toon

of Empire or Democracy, depending

on the rope they knotted

(quipu linen, rotted

on the mountaintop).  Swaddling

kid, Vallejo baby.  Lincoln

logs cradle the guest

fresh from wilderness

of ruin (arc of Constantine)

               *

lit by milky Okeanos

whence a black stone

fell, judged by no one –

Petersburg akme (nostos).

Impenetrable wisdom of

Columbia... the dove

of liberty, hove-

to – an alien corn-trove

in that placid Atlantic harbor,

lifting her copper torch

of caritas (scorch-

welded like a bolted nut) over

the twinkling arbor of a bent planet.

The nations tremble, the old

Winnebago starts cold –

rumbles into mobile mercy-net;

Thunderbird circles to Red Wing

becoming human being

in the mirror of Sing-Sing

(bright angle of prism-thing).

She was woodpeckered to a tree

like some Raven-Bluejay

out Oregon way.

Crossroads of simplicity –

a monarch butterfly in Mexico

could not have sung better

with keel o’ green cedar

or almond in Quauhnahuac (ey yo).

4.17.17

Or soil science : Stubborn Grew began with a kind of sculptural impression of muddy Voronezh farmland, as presented in Mandelstam's little landscape poems (The Voronezh Notebooks, trans. the McKanes, Bloodaxe Bks).

Salience... silence.

The Former formertive fortress-thoughts, & the Latta on sculpture.

solidity & many-sidedness. approachable-impregnable. more than the sum of its rip-offs.

sculpture is serious. the expense of sweat & the weight and roundness, the fact that it's just going to sit there.

though there is plenty of lightness & humor in sculpture nowadays.

not that I know much about it.

in sculpture the design is its own armature and gravity is built into the equilibrium. what you see is design itself, and you feel its weight. (& the materials, their sheen or depth.)

a sculpture ornaments or crowns a place. it is built to last.

it marks a happy contingency, at the insection of objective & subjective.

sculpture is just an extension of landscape, a salience. ridges, rocks, trees - even meadows are sculpted.