Dante caught the bug

FORSAKEN MINOTAUR

Somewhere between Venice & Ravenna

(Rimini?) – on an errand

for Lord Guido, friend

& host – Dante caught the bug (malaria?).

All those goat-paths of exile

all those curial corridors

mostly meant chores.

The heart stays just a brief while.

A trembling bird unfurls wing-feathers

in the still woods of March;

hear her voice catch

racing through the final chapters

of winter.  While every ghost of Alighieri

clusters by the Rubicon…

that stream of lethal human

fish-traps (Caesar-veins of slavery).

Henry, his curly churl, would stalk

through the rose cloud

of his quatrain (loud

quarantine) to sit upon his dark

& Rheingold throne (where Caesars reign).

The desolations… how

to begin?  Let’s start now.

Assemble palms to ease real pain.

Clap him in irons, or set him free.

Exiled from sybil-sylph

the rage becomes himself –

forsaken Minotaur of you & me.

3.15.20

Yellow-gold forsythia

TWO CIRCLES

Down by the spring river, tossing sticks

in prehistoric Mizz,

my Jordan – little Isis-

canoes, or Ferrarese six-

wheelers; in my mind’s darkroom

recalling you – Love’s raven-

haired sybil (guardian

at the Rock’s entrance).  Your gloom

when my father’s birthday wheeled around

each April.  The yellow-gold

forsythia enfold

your mother’s grave, who died... O sound

those flowery depths, Ophelia –

and rise again!  He was

a good man – rays

of intellectual Amor blessed his day;

he might have walked her from that grave.

A little light only,

through camera oscura...

you know.  You showed me her cave

in San Francisco’s spare kitchen –

where a thin light-blade

infiltrates the Maid

so Piero’s hypno-sarabande might spin

anew (red cedar, blue spruce, evergreen).

Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with

Two Circles... one light-heavy scythe

defines this wheel’s circumference (unseen).

4.12.16