DOUBLE LINE
The Mississippi mottled with ice
a milky translucence
in the limpid air. Sense
of coral rings solidifying. Twice
& twice... smoky astigmatism
of a sundog rainbow.
Miss Destiny, Hobo.
Frescoed Siena formalism –
sweet couch of Pax, Justitia,
grave horsehair salience.
A gray circumference
of flags, targets... the palm of Jonah
read into fragile cat’s-cradle
or spiderweb. A disk
of gold nailed to a casque
(louis, doubloon) – mandala-medal
for Hamlet’s mettle (or Macbeth).
Time circles on a nail;
therein hangs a tail.
Serious blasts off the mast of death.
The little copperplate landscape
of Tower Hill (the Witch’s
Hat) my mother etched
reminds me of Big Bear’s last scrape –
Henry’s author – the buried man
on Arthur Ave.,
#33 (just below
that rise) – black Denmark sun
*
son of Dragon Pen. & round
the table in my heart
Little Bear will shout
for joy – recomposing the sound
of Mendelssohn, his neighborhood
(old Arthur St., where
we’d begun). Circular
the agate labyrinth, dark with the blood
of Jonah Fisher-King. The gray
bird croons in the tamarack.
The rigid Minotaur is back –
orange Leviathan in search of prey;
only a copper penny in a well
might draw the milky-grey
dolphin to leap this way,
& breach his livid traitor’s spell.
Only a moon-shot Camelot;
only a breathing dream.
Green island scheme
lifted from pyramidal plot
to float – an almond eye within
a double line, one lofty
figure for equality.
Sign of a Jonah resurrection
(life-saver up from hurricane).
So pearls shine from a shell
beneath deep ocean-swell,
Earth circling Maypole again.
2.5.17
