petit songe du solstice

MASS PLANTING

The soaring voices of the Rose Ensemble

filled the cavernous wooden vault

of St. Mary’s with green light

on solstice night.  Meek humble

faces in a crowd become limestone

architecture of high song –

a van der Weyden throng,

a Bruegel mass planting a cornerstone.

When the tender light falls first

& softly on the muddy fringe

of some new edifice... strange

dewy glinting, where the stone burst

from whale-mouth of the earth

(Jonah-Persephone’s deep

crypt, where ages keep)

with fluttery breath of infant birth.

Jonah... Osiris... buried Man...

little Nutcracker King

solving his Sphinx thing,

finally.  Sibylline Isis (Belgian)

murmuring – I am that which was

& is & ever shall be;

no mortal has ever

lifted the veil which covers me.  Cuz,

tell Henry : Rex Pacificus

has found his mate

beyond the Golden Gate –

Magdalen, her gardener (Jesus).

12.22.18

his ping-pong twang

WINTER HARBOR

John Berryman, at the Guggenheim

with Robert Lowell

(twins of the groundswell

‘60s – gyrfalcons of the time)

relates a cutting parable

to illustrate poetic

speech.  Paternalistic

hot-shot banker plunks edible

& butler-polished gift-apple

into tot’s trick-or-treat

bag... You big shit!

yells kid – you crushed the crap

out of my cookie! (Guggenheim

giggles).  Jokes take place

in Minneapolis – this

much-derided mini-apple (rhymes

with Big).  Poet’s last home.

Dust-devils & tornadoes

fill his Oklahoma shoes.

His ping-pong twang off spiral womb

booms (sepulcher-recording)

up the ascending ramp

of modern art (Duchamp

is, Mr. Bones).  & there be something

weird ‘bout Henry – year-long

yearning in the yearling

lurching at spring –

light from Evening Star (so long!)

                  *

glancing toward Morning Star

across a black-iced

Mississippi (nice

Minnesota teeth, or solar flare).

The holm oak is an evergreen.

Turned inside-out, grief

lifted underleaf –

a pale moss-light, Nativity scene.

Like that Natasha veering toward

her lonesome labyrinth,

whose airy terebinth

fills sails of summer shade –

whose fluttering eyelids well up

with incomparable

change.  As in the parable

of viceroy in treetop –

evanescent black-&-yellow

wings’ twin semaphore

your sign-lingo, your

promise of new life (tomb-slow,

lentissimo).  The snarky raven

& the tremulous dove –

the starlings’ chatter-trove

amid bare, barren limbs... Olympian

Zeus rattling his thunder-oak

will never leave this winter

harbor – mangy splinter,

tuneful cove – spooky light-spoke.

12.22.16

Light riding, westward

UMBRIAN BEAM

On the shortest day, in these northern parts

the river is quiet, the sky

is gray.  A heaving sigh

of flesh, my body is... (the old poet’s

confession).  Too heavy for

this rusted lattice, locked

in Mississippi ice (rock-

frigid rictus).  JB – metaphor

for Job, mayhap.  Job, an icon

of hectored humanity –

who in latter day will see

my Redeemer stand before me, on

the earth.  Sparse light, thin

calumet of raven-smoke...

parting curtains with a stroke

of ink, an Ariadne-thread (woolen

quipu).  The trumpet plays tattoo

above furled Flemish loess

in Queequeg runes (remorse);

lambfields of returning, clumps of yew

veiling a furtive limestone chapel.

Under an alcove of

blu oltramar, Piero’s dove

rays Mary’s robe into mandorla

made with fingertips – Umbrian beam

piercing raven-umber

(barely).  & though they slumber

now, soon shall they wake... in Jerusalem.

12.21.15