traveling Walter Whitman

ALMOND-SEAL

A luminosity of grays

above the winter river.

Bands of peach, & silver.

A quiet surge past Pig’s Eye,

which became St. Paul.  John

Berryman sleeps on a bluff

nearby.  Once is enough

for everyone (a long time gone).

One casket will suffice.  Paul

was Saul once; an orange

angel flared so strange

his blade curved into burial.

He felt the change upon his skin.

So Queequeg tingled

where the needle angled

in.  The tattoo (Ecuadorian

gold) blood-red – indelible

recapitulation

(via serpentine

Cain-crozier) of Abe-Ape’s edible

ancestry (just incredible).

The primate history

of human mystery

incarnate in a star (blind, Oedipal)

                   *

who fell to earth, not far from here.

& like Walt Whitman, wandered

swamp-deltas... milk-&-honeyed

Hobo meadows... (poplar, cedar)...

all the way to San Francisco.

Golden Gate grandeur

sparkling orange-azure

not one whit less marvelo

than Solomon’s Templo.  Yet neither

will surpass one friar wight

who flutes across deep night

his piccolo arpeggios (Breather-

Bro to Sister Sigh-Nature)

lifting his humble sign’s

Venetian-blind design

beneath that glory-span – sheer

delicatesse of silver threads

raveling safety net

for one slight violet

(shorn, scarred by callous crowds).

She is your Imogen, who keeps

weight balanced on a wire;

fleet-footed candlefire,

light houseboat over frosty deeps,

your witty Sophie – at the wheel

of supernatural law –

sailing toward Awe

full-smile (lips compassing her almond-seal).

1.11.17

crumbs beside the Po

SERPENT-ROOT

The life that spirals from the sea-cave

like a serpent-root, a curious

labyrinth etched across

the limestone of a vaulted nave –

the dappled sparkling of infant

river-wavelets.  Mud-brown

vortex of an unknown

casket – Easter-packet – font

of raven-crumbs, beside the Po.

Or Ishmael’s hieroglyph –

inverted fisher-skiff

of pregnant galaxy below

afloat now, circling – a living hand,

an arm, forehead, eyebrow...

emergent tar minnow –

Tad Pole, or Polly Wag, some sand-

borne seaweed driftwood Jane...

Christa on crossties, or

IONAH (in Paradise).  Your

Queequeg is a queer cuss, man,

but OK – floats all right – can even

swim.  His Ariadne-

boles are capillary –

vein his bones into a crown

of 50 stars (for Jubilee).

The echo-cave is empty...

only Eureka!  She

has found him! crows (from sea to sea).

10.6.16

Light riding, westward

UMBRIAN BEAM

On the shortest day, in these northern parts

the river is quiet, the sky

is gray.  A heaving sigh

of flesh, my body is... (the old poet’s

confession).  Too heavy for

this rusted lattice, locked

in Mississippi ice (rock-

frigid rictus).  JB – metaphor

for Job, mayhap.  Job, an icon

of hectored humanity –

who in latter day will see

my Redeemer stand before me, on

the earth.  Sparse light, thin

calumet of raven-smoke...

parting curtains with a stroke

of ink, an Ariadne-thread (woolen

quipu).  The trumpet plays tattoo

above furled Flemish loess

in Queequeg runes (remorse);

lambfields of returning, clumps of yew

veiling a furtive limestone chapel.

Under an alcove of

blu oltramar, Piero’s dove

rays Mary’s robe into mandorla

made with fingertips – Umbrian beam

piercing raven-umber

(barely).  & though they slumber

now, soon shall they wake... in Jerusalem.

12.21.15

The occasional ark

Sometimes the macrocosm & the microcosm bump into each other, I guess.  I was reading some old Ravenna Diagrams, about a painting of St. Augustine by Piero della Francesca (I saw it at the Frick), in which Augustine's cloak is a crazy quilt of leather Gospel stories.  This got me thinking about Melville's Queequeg & his tattoos.  & then there was a story today on the BBC about the divided Bering Straits islands, Big and Little Diomede (divided for decades between USA & USSR).

In some sense the earth is a human body... in some nonsense, anyway....

WOLSEY RED

On a sultry 16th, in the month of Caesar

I was ambling down by the Blind

King, on Wickenden –

betwixt the Golden Sheaf (or Fleece) &

her Sheep’s Clothing – like a raven

in wolf gear, or some Pierre

o’Cesca – like That Man there,

following his own tattoos into an Inchon

Dept. of the Interior.

Aboard the good ship Keep-U

(between Racquel & Rue – 

achh...) skirting an ice curtain

somewhere... in a Wolsey red, mate.

Weaving around blind

cataracts, muzzled

shoals – paring bears in the Strait

below White Narrows (it was 1728).

I don’t know why ‘twas done.

The Inuit intuit none

of our designs.  Split Diomede? Great.

They look you in your eye as though

you were in RI!  Weird.

I only see weed (black widow’s

weed).  A coffin exchange came through

the aerial, Mira – maybe

amygdaloid inside?

Keep the white slide

for video, Queequeg. That’s my knee.

9.2.15

Little Diomede Island (Ignaluk)