it's only gravity

SEA-SALTS

… an astronomer consulting the stars to-day would announce

                    that the most favourable day of the year for weighing light is May 29.

                                       – Arthur Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation

The brightness of the light shines more or less

in various fields of stars.

The Hyades, for instance, are

magnificent – rays bend around the sun’s eclipse

according to their gravity (1132?)

& their displacements make

a parallax, will shake

the skies – like that black hole in Virgo

where the whole cosmos in its photon rings

as in a coelostat on El Principe

looks back from a funhouse mirror

mired in the cryptic gloom one Friday brings

(in April, in RI).  So when Prince Hobo Hal

sets out upon the Ocean stream

paddling his gyroscope-trireme

his dim reflections shade his violet pal

Jean-Jo, behind their glare.  It’s only gravity.

They glide along past green Cahoki-o

beneath a soaring Gateway prow

toward topaz Gulf (ineffable Mardi Gras)

where Jean-Jo’s mild humility

(like unknown soldier or

grey pebble on the shore)

emerges – lightweight solidarity –

& swathes him in a dove-grey cloud

of granite apses, limestone

spires… an airy congregation

of sea-salts (& makes his father proud).

4.7.20

articulated bagpipes

CICADA SHELL

Last night, in the final French class

Charles explained to us

that intricate forest

of thousands of skeletal pieces

under the armor of the vast organ

of Notre Dame, somehow

surviving the late inferno –

a delicate spider of sound, within

the cathedral’s gray cicada shell

of feathery stone light.

Now, in my monkish hideout

of twisted cedar, a mid-May swell

of emerald sheen beyond the doorway

stretches toward Iona

or maybe Compostela

or Jerusalem... & scrawny face of Henry

lined like wood by age & foolishness

lifts to spring brightness

one wee dram of hopefulness,

mayhap – someone’s vernal Inverness.

It is the ordinary light of day

flashing through our human

imago, her chaste design –

what we might be, beyond dismay

in the conjunction of clear consciences

set toward a restoration

of the common good.  One

amid many – octave’s consonance.

5.15.19

the public good is an intellectual thing

WHATEVER HAPPENS

                                                      i.m. Sister Pat DeMoully

Hobo, that disintegrating Henry

sank into Mississippi

bottomland.  Big Muddy.

Like Lucius with his wayward donkey

rescued (finally) by Isis-Psyche.

The mule wanders Badlands.

Civic twilight (all hands

off deck).  Some refusenik-refugee.

Henry recalls the Brown & Sharpe

machinery complex

where young Rex

mingled with VISTA volunteers, harp

tuned to Dionysian thunder drum.

Green genius JFK

chanted (head all bloody)

Camelot concept.  Whole sum

of common good (an intellectual thing)

for young collegians,

braving their joy-dance

from campus triangle to iron ring;

the commonwealth is worth defending

whatever happens to me

(beam, solidarity).

Like Sister Pat in Jonestown, bending

from Minneapolis to Mississippi’s

veritable excess poverty.

To be there, every day...

a live-oak Galahad, touching the keys.

1.22.19

ledge of regal limestone

HUMAN PLEDGE

The cool dry tesserae congeal

in Sant’ Apollinaris –

dance, coalesce

into high figures of a royal seal.

Exalted features... recognizable.

Your neighbors (Limentani).

Riding bikes to the sea

to get away from scent of stable

(Mussolini’s racehorses).

That was then; this

is placid Minneapolis.

We’re not like them, of course (off-course).

The constitution of a human pledge

blazons these images

from pencil-boxes... pages

scratched out.  Natasha’s ledge

of regal limestone – living rock,

streaked honey-colored

marble.  Moss-layered

icon, limpid under chopping block.

Our covenants of disputation

rest on implicit ground;

Rhode Island in the round,

an Ocean State of transmutation.

The bond of love is clean as salt,

as plain as day.  We are

redeemed by holy fire.

The one you seek has left the vault.

6.30.18

Abe's in the Gulf

TROMPE L’OEIL

Peto, Reminiscences.

Such silent stillness

in a wooden door.  This

repressed memory (forsakenness).

The mottled copper green, absinthe.

Like curdled Liberty.

Coins, ticket stubs... three

paths into the shredded labyrinth

of old glued paper notes.  Almost

erased, some calculations –

sums, additions...

within the mandorla (Abe’s

photo-ghost).  Abe’s playing golf

today, down at the Gulf –

in Florida, with grimacing

elf.  By the marred lake, full of pelf

& flattened tires... distended Brown

Decades of gaslight shadows,

drilled by torpedoes

into stunned prey (pressed down

under demented mansions).  Still

there is another window

clears this reified view

(black coral reef of sacrificial

scars).  The solidarity of living

stones is leaping light –

scaled from a dragon-fight

like trompe l’oeil Thanksgiving

                *

or hologram of humming bird

circling the whisper dome

of spiritual freedom.

Ghost Dance, suspended word

hung from the apex of the tent –

a veil of murmuring linen

around the target sun

of a salty human sacrament

of joy, shipmate!  Ahoy, Jonah!

Cresting the deep wave,

smiling palm-wave

circumference hailing hurrah

for the red white & blue!  Old Glory

spangled by Love!

Columbia, dove

of Liberty... Emancipation story!

So the battle lines are drawn

at last.  Maid Marion –

trampled onto a plane

with Jack & Jackie, by the Lion-

Tooth (orange-tan phony-booth) –

you loose one gray thread

from the bleeding head

of Apollinaire... qui chante... the truth

shall make you free.  The limestone

wrinkles beneath clear streams.

Sovereign of human dreams,

arise like Francis to your servant throne.

2.12.17