ledge of regal limestone

HUMAN PLEDGE

The cool dry tesserae congeal

in Sant’ Apollinaris –

dance, coalesce

into high figures of a royal seal.

Exalted features... recognizable.

Your neighbors (Limentani).

Riding bikes to the sea

to get away from scent of stable

(Mussolini’s racehorses).

That was then; this

is placid Minneapolis.

We’re not like them, of course (off-course).

The constitution of a human pledge

blazons these images

from pencil-boxes... pages

scratched out.  Natasha’s ledge

of regal limestone – living rock,

streaked honey-colored

marble.  Moss-layered

icon, limpid under chopping block.

Our covenants of disputation

rest on implicit ground;

Rhode Island in the round,

an Ocean State of transmutation.

The bond of love is clean as salt,

as plain as day.  We are

redeemed by holy fire.

The one you seek has left the vault.

6.30.18

"Can you enter the great acorn of light?"

BLACK DIAMOND

This heart-shaped leaf from cottonwood

dark green & silver-gray

may float down other rivers – say

the Don, by Voronezh... or Eridanos,

through Ravenna (north of Hades)... &

each windblown plum sails

off a shakedy limb, whose spiral

roots corkscrew (like S.S. Normandie

propeller) down into a labyrinthine

seine of mounded knots...

a weedy sea-change (plot

of plots).  Black Diamond is crystalline –

common as salt; an octochoron,

regular, complex;

cubic prismatic Rex

or tesseractic honeycomb (acorn

beanie, maybe).  From her, La Paix

like some Hermione

dances to life again – see

there!  Her coracle – l’Éternité!

My raven-tesserae form nature morte.

Venn diagram for Orpheus

bent to his Beatrice-dust

in Adriatic backwater – ‘til brought

up short, like Slocum, John (Shaker

Indian of Puget Sound)

or like Black Elk, who found

her sun-spun gyroscope (stung-sweet Makar).

7.22.16