like a small town playground

LIGHT GOLD

The restoration of all things…

what’s it about this phrase

corrals my shifty gaze?

Some infant stimulus it brings?

As at the source of vast rivers

(Mississippi, Danube)

a baby spring’s hubbub

purls out of ground… shimmers

in bitter February air & light.

The restoration of a truth

too plain, too clear, to booth

as Peter would (its glare so bright).

Universal constant, Einstein’s measure;

flexible cinch-thread

of muttering light gold

sent to bind man, through rose embrasure.

Power’s byzantine – but truth Franciscan.

Peaceable polity

is founded in equality

chaste as a child’s eye (Petersburgian).

The restoration of the human world

is like a small town playground,

where the rusty sound

of an ancient iron swing is curled

within your inner ear.  You heard it

years ago, once… now,

again.  No one knows how

the goldfinch’s tricolor obsignat.

2.16.20

a minuscule Mt. Everest

DEEP BREATH

Woke up this mornin’ with m’mind

set on freedom…

– & why Cahokia, hm?

Why this iron spring, set to unwind

primeval intuition of first peoples?

Perhaps it’s simple logic –

some high One, past magic;

Wakan Tanka, speeding on wind (eagles

& lightning, shattering the oak).

Faint scent of acacia

anchored in Ogygia.

Sophie Lightfoot, before anyone spoke.

So, in Australian wilderness

& Abrahamic villages –

among Socratic sages

in desert Siberian fastnesses –

with recent atheists, even

– who contradict themselves

if they refuse to delve

into this question… (re the unbroken

unity of truth itself).  The wind

goes rushing thru the room

in a gust of life… boom!

While over on Monk’s Mound

one handful of cruddy clay whorls

into centripetal J

beneath the Milky Way.

A mundus sprinkled with corals

                   *

or small hill – minuscule Mt. Everest

tattooed with a J

for Jonah, Juliet, or Ariadne…

signum of Persephone-thesis – quest

to rectify kerygma-proclamation

past this wind of madness

overwhelming Loch Ness

with malicious Minotaur (declares U.N.).

So take a deep breath, cries Roger,

stepping forward, forehead

like a hatchet, hand

held outstretched (some blind codger).

The tyranny of the Man of Sin,

the Man of Lawlessness

seems universal – nonetheless...

like an acorn made of lead, woven

into the ruddy branches of the human-

strung quartet (Beethoven)...

132… 1132… – how Magdalen

comes running from the limestone

sepulcher!  & how Natasha limped

up to the poet’s temple…

felt knees crumple…

when the continuum of limpid

violins prepared a shroud for Love

& Guillaume wept, also

under the droning falsetto

of Villon’s smoky crossword (O vvv)…

2.5.20

shout it from the rooftops

CLEAR PINE

Hobo was playing solo crane bone flute

like an airy trompette marine

as he watched Henry puzzle on,

muttering his thumpy rhythms en route.

It’s the Union, the Union, Hobo intoned –

as your eye is clear & light

in the pasture breeze – right?

We wrestle with this violence, shark-boned

with vicious avarice – yet Sophie-gentleness

may rule at last, a restoration

of your soul’s volition –

the true child-wish, mild & harmonious

as that lamb-lily in the tiger’s eye;

as Sophie plays her middle Cs

at center of the keys

& swings all 88 into the sapphire sky.

Hope is our natural state – for a grace

bestowed, unbeknownst to us.

Lost & found – like that Tombs

Angel, swimming from the marble face

to lift a prisoner out of the dust –

Rebecca Salome Foster, spun

by Bitter-Lamb into the sun;

drawn out again (by Jeremy Ann) at last...

So Henry clutched the muddy wheel

& turned it, counter-clockwise;

from oceanic Providence

to clear pine river-source... you feel

                       *

it turning, turning... into San Francisco

& a rainbow pigeon-throat

blent with rainbow trout

all natural wonders for that footloose hobo

full of ecstatic spiritual deliverance

marked on his feet & palms

from walking, chanting psalms

all the way to the Delta – joyeux entrance

into azure Gulf, American trumpets

O when the saints

come marching in...

& the clay wheel turns bronze serpents

into flame-gold lambs, whose linking thread

folds limbs into a March on Washington :

where they will wash away corruption

& the violence greed breeds – the dead

shall climb up from their graves, & dance

the Beguine – the beginning again;

the restoration of all men & women

in the clay river-light of Cahokia’s immense

plateau – across Big Muddy from the sky-

blue angle of the Gateway Arch –

that silvery canoe, echoing the arc

of one invisible & omnipresent loving eye :

Aye-Aye of Providence.  Elliptical wafer

lifted from humble bowl...

Hagia Sophia (universal

soul) wearing her limestone life-saver.

8.9.19