so in such straits

GOLD FLEECE

In the blank depths, at nadir of winter.

An acid stain of turpentine.

Peto’s absinthe green

in the still life; drumbeats in the mirror.

Lincoln & Kennedy… Kennedy & King.

Black silk around the photographs.

Time, summarized in epitaphs –

a rocket glare that freezes everything.

& traitors cluster in a mortis-ring

about great Yggdrasil,

composing lizard doggerel

with fangs of trumpery & sting

of fraud.  Shaping a lattice for a type

of self-enclosing anti-Christ,

whose mesmerism none resist –

Rumored Injustice To Be Smashed By Hype.

So in such straits we huddle round the mast.

No longer measure progress

by the steam pipe’s hiss

& whistle of alarms.  It’s in the past,

a memory of island buoyancy

elliptical & calm

we’ll find that palm;

amid light’s brilliance, a transparency

as if an eye looked down from azure dome

as acorn witness for an apple kingdom –

as if the citizens of heaven-home

were you & I… gold fleece of human freedom.

2.12.20

Reminiscences of 1865

GREY FEATHER

Today we recall the tall gaunt pioneer

with Peruvian cheekbones.

His fifth scene atones

for all that blood shed in anger

at the righting of wrongs; his brief turn

by the Gettysburg graveyard

consumes, with a perfect word,

our kindled rage in bright compassion.

The creaking panorama of all wars

since Cain killed Abel, here

slows, crawls... Ford Theatre –

whose British farce on Yankee manners

stumbles from play to traitor’s hour.

Dusky similitudes...

old King of the Woods

hung from an oak (in Raven’s power)...

the tragic pattern rotates on a string.

Tyro, dangling puppets

tangled on parapets,

shuffles the script – the play’s the thing.

Your clear-eyed servant laughs his last,

cries, Come to my Thanksgiving

feast!  An overlay of evening

wash soaks its river of papyrus bast

in crimson, indigo, & brown.

Still life.  Peto.

Reminiscences on Yew.

Grey feather you must make your own.

4.14.18

Weldon finds his shoes

O FLOWER

                                   For a Tear is an Intellectual Thing

This evening light over the sink

& clutter of Mom’s pots

dish soap, what-nots

stillness of an eye that doesn’t blink

pupil of an unseen commonwealth

Lincoln-logos of a realm

Time cannot overwhelm

where Walter nurses back to health

Hart’s broken farfalla-tower

& Weldon finds his shoes

again   & Berryman his

balance on that bridge   O Flower

Joy   Out of these winter fields

where Bruegel-raven   zig-

zags   over leafless twigs   &

Guillaume’s pink turban   slowly   heals

Your graven images of gravity,

Henry   my autumn fall

1132   a burial

at sea   the perspicacity

of buoyant Jonah   one grey gull 

white-feathered underneath

lights on a wave   breathe,

Dove   lift down from empty skull

my ashen diamond   the snow skims

sparkling   under the sun

& from bright gatherings one

Flamant beams   whose warmth redeems

7.27.16

Walk through the mirror

MINOR TEAR

Bleak winter shades... crows in the trees

beak-gnashing, rasping (caw-

caw, hawk-hawk).  Low

Earth, rotund silentium (dregs, lees).

Stillness of still-life – Brown Decades

(hoist Peto).  The Just Man

imago is just a man –

barely there, through simple glades

of green.  Mirror Lakes liked him,

in Mendelssohn.  Only

an infinitely gently-shivery

Rabbi, Hiawatha Honeybear – bro Jim,

our lunky logos (penny-loafing).

Who bears it all, past

He- or She-Cat’s paste-

up Geryon-masque (a scary nothing).

This maze contains a minor tear.

& through a crevice there

one Ariadne hair

leads you to almond-gold rain-bear.

Earth seethes with ziggurats of fraud

& blind men lash themselves

to violence (selva

oscura mitts gorilla code);

but it shall not be so with thee.

Bunny hikes one eye

& looks for wheeling Eli

to come by (benevolent memory).

3.3.16

Remembrances of 1865 (so beginneth Ravenna Diagram Bk 6)

SEA WASH

To turn your glance back, eastward, from

the height of a great orange

pier (Home on the Range

in your ear) – immense Pacific foaming

behind you... like a lookout in a crow’s-

nest – a single burning glass,

a golden eagle-eyepiece

taking in a continent.  Up to Rose

Island Lighthouse (Narragansett Bay) –

to the byzantine capitol dome

in Providence, whose gnomon

is a gold harpooner – looking away

back west, toward you.  Photoshot (still).

As when the sun stops briefly

over Jericho, before they

blow the trumpets, & the walls fall;

as if you stood before a Peto

still-life (intricate

& accurate memento

of complete stigmata-scrimshaw hero).

I hear another sea wash, sighing

round salt emerald shores.

Columba’s Iona (wars

far off, now) laved with dying kings’

repentance-prayers (touch of blessing

for the wounded flutes

of clay).  So lift your lute,

sad Frisco boy.  She’s leeward (glistening).

2.12.16

Still life with JFK

PAPER SAILBOAT

His profile in shining lunar silver

twinkles with Dublin glee

on the half-dollar (JFK,

insouciant).  Camelot forever.

I was born in ’52, believe

it or not, but only

52 years ago I

lost my innocence (heave

sigh).  I was 11 years old

when they shattered the crown

of the redhead king.  My own.

A double birthday, dubbed.  Fold

up the deck of your paper sailboat, son;

in Newport they will mourn

the people’s chosen one,

killed by the backlash of the gun.

A still life, now.  Brown Decades

(Peto).  Reminiscences

of Lincoln.  Whitman’s

chrysanthemum (cresting cascades

of lilacs).  Memphis underworld –

I gather the limbs of Osiris

(52-pickup, Rimini-Venice).

First king, dead king.  Neighborhood

gossip has it, Solomon,

he’s coming back.  He

never died.  Like Jonah

Houdini, he’ll eat fish in Hebron

yet again.

11.22.15

Palmyra, Palmyra

I heard part of a BBC broadcast on the ISIS rampage in Syria.  A British scholar was asserting that the neoclassical architecture of Washington, DC was modeled in part on the ruins of Palmyra.

That's not where this poem came from, exactly.

A poem is the idiom of an idiot, full of flounders & slurry, signifying (maybe) something.  Ezekiel saw dem wheel's a'glory, way in the middle of the air (Louis Armstrong).  Eugenio Montale waxed lyric about this particular LP.

"Nummulitic" : art historian Adrian Stokes talks about the particular kind of limestone used to build the pyramids - called "Nummulitic".  After the nummulites, small protozoic creatures trapped in Egyptian limestone - from "nummus", or coin, in Latin, because of their disc-like shape.

Somehow we got from Egyptian nummulites to American dollar bills (with the pyramid & the disc) - from money to Mammon - George Washington on the other side.

Long way from the Lincoln penny.

Poetry is a work-in-progress, like the Earth (according to divine Providence).  Ursus here is a sort of image of the State as Beast (USA, RUS, USSR).  But the bears might be redeemed.  "Without vision, the people perish."

WOODEN LOGS

August departure... evening crickets

elegize on wooden

logs.  In Peto’s brownian

study, a sad decade disintegrates

like Queen Zeno’s palm-fronds, in

Palmyra.  One wing-scratched hand

pleads Washington’s jarred band

of masons (keening for Syrian

widows, orphan sons).  Important

information inside.

Your gravy train can’t hide

from Grace, her chaste Nubian portent –

always arriving never quite,

a Paradise for turtle-

dives.  So melt the mortal

Quito coin, our double-down knight

(shy U-bird cycling her parking

lot).  Concentric wheels

of Nummulitic seals...

one bears dawn for Ursus (barking

Mammon flipping tails) – the other

gyrates toward his irate

Beatrice – oceanic

ex, Czech mate (cyclonic mother

coated in cute limestone slime).

One down, one to go

up again, Horatio.

Antique Atlantis corals rime.

8.31.15

Reminiscences of 1865, by John F. Peto (Minneapolis Institute of Arts)