Touch of tuning fork

HUNTER’S GLOVE

Gray world, wind washing rain across

the enormous limestone crevasse

down River Road.  Slant layers

of pre-Cambrian scrawls (wrinkles

of periwinkles, snails, seashells)

pre-date the hieroglyphs –

those Isis-&-Osiris skiffs

loaded with already-hoary piles

of Horus-eyes, gold scarab beads...

Cottonwoods like willows here –

divining rods bent to the River’s

imperturbable Runnymede.

The stream’s a mobile parallax.

One touch of tuning fork

will resonate through stark

tenebrous time-caverns – axe-

marks of Raven shadow Dove

into a treasure-trove

of hunter’s glove (apes

channel fright to constellation-love).

I would sound that iron undertone

down through the catacomb

of trench-war years – hum

Psyche-Wisdom’s will be done,

track Ariadne’s thread, from Chartres

to Notre Dame, from Magna

Carta to the Frisco Bay –

where Lady knots her safety net.

12.10.15

& the ship sails on

CAUTANTOWWIT

The sweet old pussy willow’s gone

that once o’ershadowed Pushkin’s

backyard grave (great Russian

cat).  Leaves not a leaf behind –

only an empty space (alas, 

alack) anchors a magic

carpet o’ masticated

stump.  So we hung up our lyres

on the bow of that stubby caravel,

Acacia – stuffed to the gills

with incoherent motorings,

burbling Barranca Straits – with Mal

& Papa consulting the cabinet

non-stop... coat, liquor...

What have I left her,

now, here?  These were all spirits,

veering toward Prince Eddy’s Island.

Wracking my brains... hollow

ravine in the pupil, valley

so low... black hole of Depression

Inlet.  Perdita, somewhere in

the safety net, under

the ark at Porta Aurea –

dear lightsome daughter!  Ravlin,

unraveled so.  Now rainbows flash

Medusa-shells, O

Mountainous Sad Shadowship –

to wit, to woo... (by Narragansett ash).

9.25.15

where was the willow once

Pushkin