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

by the teeth of St. Anthony Falls

SAY HELLO

End of summer sounds.  A surf

of crickets & cicadas

swells into the branches.

Phantom cottonwoods (leaf-

hearts pale yellow, dried-out husks).

Anemic light, grown timid

spooked by swollen shade –

August forecast (autumn dusk).

Henry attends to his North Star,

his Union under onion

dome... tending toward ruin

now.  Anger drives the darkness car.

Sleek starlings yoked in harnesses.

Electronic neon

beckoning Power’s iron

catalogs (bright pigeonhole affinities).

He stands by the teeth of St. Anthony

Falls – a Berryman

apparition, a ghastly John

lingering by fish-scale cutlery

(zombie ice-fishing is reviving

local watering holes,

say Twin Cities

polls).  Barely surviving

in professional cinch, Polaris

remains fixed in place –

kingfisher Falcon-Ace

tweaked by that wench in Paris

                  *

out of all shape, except a heart-

scarred origami –

Guillaume or Alexei

dovetailing it to Jordan-sprite.

So helpless Noah watches his waters

subside.  He turn to Hobo –

Hobo turn to her.  So

child become grain – grain gathers

to child.  On the scandalous retina

of Mary Magdalen,

the Earth rewinds again

as Man – wrath spun to mattina.

I have no rage.  The otherness

of your... your mother-smile.

He lay for a while

on sands of Jordan wilderness,

at peace.  Your American motherland

is an adamant green

Everywhere.  A limestone

welcome-mat (with waves of eye-in-hand).

It was here before we all arrived;

it was not to be won quite yet

by war, but by legitimate

befriending – loving everything that lived. 

& only a bum in San Francisco

or homeless reprobate

treated like jail-bait

knows Charity enough to say hello

& happy lovey-dovey Thanksgiving to you

8.22.18

my circuit is circumference

HONEY-OAK

Sunshine in June – one whole note

melts into the chord

of summer.  In the old

garden of Time, the poet’s boat

extends its shade toward evening twilight.

The golden ratio of the sunflower

stretches to the nth power

(its perihelion); clay speeds to insight,

cartwheeling uphill into angelic life –

that bright-gated City

whose anti-gravity

magnetic North amends all strife.

Through this fan-feathered diapason

of a planet, the limpid figure

of a limping friend, your

sister-dove (gray pebble, midnight sun);

her hazel eye takes in mortality

as a grave garden absorbs

the one whose goldfinch orb

will bend, in parallax fluidity

as rivers from Paradise stream forth

or a mustard seed

flares – life’s high meed –

a sunny gyroscope (balanced from birth).

So the Messiah-bloom of Israel

like Joachim Fiore,

Henry Flower (ey

hey yo) anchors goodness to the Pole

                 *

Star, steadfast over midnight waters;

so Infinite Presence

arcs into salience

turtledoves & fiery matières

de Bretagne (Arthurian hide-&-seek

the Once & Future King

resolves, into a ring

of riven oaks & golden fleece).

The One Who Rose from the Dead

lives in our midst –

Who left his Holy Ghost

as marigold, to blaze undaunted

Hagia Sophia (with a million eyes);

American peacock (turkey?)

or Aramaic poppycock (see

how archaic our ways – how wise!) –

only Phoenix-Turtle comprehends

how from dream-song flame

Reality revolves the same

again... as when a potter bends

her starfish over azure sand

& lofting clay from seabed

into galactic Roundhead

Cavalier (old Charley-Horse le Grand)

curling himself into green honey-oak

until the lightning stroke

flashes – where thunder spoke

the wheel that spun Ezekiel (Rose-Boke).

6.20.17

Of Marcel Proust, of Oblomov

TEEMING ORBIT

In the old octagonal gazebo

shaded from sunrays

screened from mosquitoes

I think of Marcel Proust, of Oblomov;

of the haze of tranquil summers

in an equilibrium

of nature.  Let it come.

The books fade into memoirs,

epics filigree life’s borders

with remote heroics

while the housecat licks

his fur, & children play recorders.

To live life on the edge

of the petunia patch.

To bandage every scratch,

wipe every tear...  sea-azure pledge!

Noah’s flute-compass – a pilot’s

Providence – the homing

pigeon’s purple ring

of ocarina nostos-pivots...

Deep down in the teeming orbit

of the clay, a blessed

favor lifts each nested

creature into intricate

brush-feathered limestone – emerald

fresco, where white-

haired eagles congregate –

floresce into the parchment (gold).

5.18.16

back to when I must have lost that book in a field somewhere.

August flowers, going dry & spindly. crickets & cicadas.

evening sneaks up, unnoticed, on the late afternoon.