April is the finickiest month

SMOKE PILLARS

April is the finickiest month, sunshine & snowfall

confusing the fiddleheads.  Atop the bluff

across from St. Paul, three tough-

soft Indian mounds are igloo-domical.

A little further down, the buried poet-man

dreams in Resurrection Cemetery.

& further yet, across from Eero’s airy

Gateway Arch, Cahokian terraces remain –

vernal ziggurat earthworks climb into sky.

The river moves in swerves… &

doesn’t move.  A copperhead,

unblinking, eyeing you… deciding – live or die?

Flanking that rushing flickering stillness

the mounds are more than motionless.

How… curious crowds can only guess.

Perpetual smoke pillars curse & bless.

Yet these temples are only an analogy.

Even the priests understood

that much.  The man tied to wood,

the woman in flames… perverse apology

in the bloodshed glass – recognition

forsaken.  Of the friend

nearby, who takes your hand…

(a glance to the heart, beyond perdition).

These vast mausoleums of bone & ash

frame unwavering grief.

Magdalenian memory, beyond belief.

& the light will not die (dwells in her eyelash).

4.13.20

in Deserto Rosso

LITTLE ROOM

Like Giuliana’s little boy, in Deserto Rosso

for 6 weeks I was on a ventilator

(“iron lung” back then).  For

Guillain-Barré.  That was 1956 or so.

Paralysis for Henry Fish Quattoir -

great reckoning in little room.

Like coffin-casket, in full bloom;

like April, breathing frailty to power.

Who shall restore the sickly Lord?

There is no temple on the earth,

no glorious basilica that’s worth

the wonder of a single child (a word

once heard with flooding tears, in Ramah).

You who are sum of all

creation – telos, quintessence, lovely corona…

behold the Argos-eyed canoe of Noah.

How the universe giulianizes in you,

Giuliana (as Cusanus wrote)!

You are both verde crown & mote

of mustard seed… the whole tree, Julio!

Now Henry faints… his epileptic storm

of vertigo (at sight of blood)

flings him to Frisco neighborhood.

Where Juliet ascends… to join a swarm

of victims, falling like rain from Golden Gate

(our Twin Towers).  He stretches

out his arms… the King of Wretches,

Grail King.  Melek, MLK (Good Friday fate).

4.1.20

searching the pipeline

GREEN FLEURETTE

With a guttering cigarette-stub candelabra

planted on his tin pan rim

old Hobo H., yea verily him,

sets off, vagrant pilgrim, on his last hurrah.

& recalls that fond octagonal gazebo

where many a summer

found him (quizzical plumber)

searching the pipeline for Cy Manitou.

High & low, & up & down the river

led by that whistling flit

of Ray Caw-somuchwit (tight

Gansett smokehole, domed in Ravenna)

Hobo went on, a-glide like some water-bat

round that chartless labyrinth

amazed with gold, & crème

de menthe – a little green fleurette

upsprung ‘mid scattered fallen leaves

& spinning like a gyroscope

cross-threaded by Hope

so’s to balance what him heart conceives.

For that whisper-caw of Wakan Tanka

cries – all the temples of Solomon

& all the domes of Justinian

are but the models of a living Anchor,

planted ‘twixt the temples of your mind

beside the hearth-fire in your heart.

O speaking brook, where rivers start!

Handy RI aerie (in your eye to find).

3.26.20