my Bruegel panorama

AUTUMN AIR

The little gold galleys of the butternut

navigate through autumn air.

My Bruegel panorama

of proverbial bird-wit is fading out.

The motherland calls Hobo.  Every leaf

a chaste canoe... Rus, Rus.

The enemy be us,

pugnacious Pogo cries – war is grief

between brothers.  Apollinaire

drifts in gray whiffs

of wistfulness... his skiff’s

more tangled up with Minotaur

than was before, sighs Psyche-

Ariadne.  That graybeard

on Ravenna guard

surrounded by gray paint-debris –

he might be me.  Ocean is gray

as wing of turtledove today.

Way in the middle of the air

Ezekiel saw them wheels a’glory

Louis sang (on path LP

somewhere in Tuscany).

Leonardo da Vinci

drew Vitruvian Man like a Kali

on a microcosmic wheel of fire –

he was such a star!

& in the Last Supper

Judas & Jesus in sfumato-mirror

                  *

reach together across girlish Jean –

or do they reach for her?

Shocked faces of the men –

is it betrayal, or espousal sign?

Some knot of gravitational waves

whorls into matrix-vortex.

Beloved spindrift Rex

emergent from that sea of graves –

a eucharist or mystical body

encircled by a palm

inscrutable as that helm

of Jonah, breaching the cloudy

surf of Ocean River – O font

of soul-transfigurement!

So rooted in the fundament

we rise as citizens of Turtle-Tent –

when the Eternal comes, & we

are summoned to a wedding-

feast.  Melodious syrinx

of Orpheus-Nazir... blithe epi-

thalamium from sparkle-profundum.

Wrath of Kali-Coatlicue-

Moloch subsides away

& Leonardo frames his simulacrum

of one vernal smile... Mona Lisa

bubbly as Virgin

on the Rocks.  Come in,

she says; God’s blessing in persona.

10.19.17

west of St. Louis

MASON JAR

& the word came out west of St. Louis.

Kind of hokey, like

a dust-devil psych-

out on eccentric orbit.  She was US.

The weird windlass twirled due Nord

into a wilderness

of cedar & watercress –

deserted road, iced-over, hard.

Held up on a tiny pinhead pine-

needle of sunlight, she spun

like a gyroscopic moon,

beholden to none.  She was fine

to behold, like a mason jar, with her G-

fitz-G major Eyelash Curl –

a square-dance whirl

around an Irish jug (from C

to C minor & back again).

She spoked light so lightly

all the ire of unspritely

iron nations (dusty canyon

grandeur in a pride of lions)

molted into Phoenix

ash & rainbow peacock’s

eyes – & I can’t write these lines

without tears wide as Okeanos

coursing planetary curves,

as Stella Morris swerves

another starfish into star (yes, yes!)

                  *

2.8.17

sleights of memory

MOSAIC SEA

Calm bronze serpent zigzags through

November Indian summer.

The northern light is clear

in smoky autumn – mirrors you.

What you cherish will remain

in sleights of memory.

A wheeled mosaic sea

en masque – galactic Halloween

as out of Egypt swam the sun

of Man (Apollinaire

with calumet, plein air)

& left his tempered wrath, his sunken

jealousy behind (dark backward

bones, full fathom five).

Ikhnaton’s beehive,

a honeyed hexagon – God

being pure agape (Manitou,

magnanimous & kind).

Sleepwalking blind

only the dream revives you –

only a breath of homely air

(smoke lifting gracefully,

light’s equanimity).

Chaste akme of the meteor –

a Lincoln logos, omnipresent;

curving profile of a brow

figuring Noah’s prow –

tender basilica to dancing bent.

11.2.16