Lanthanum 9.24

24
Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors

Providence, ye forest of whispering hands.
Compassionate mutter-potter generations’
unknown grey purring multitudinous dove-
downy town (integrity of heartfelt hopelands).

At the eastern cliffside, under an arch
of Westerly granite, eyeing the interior,
facing the labyrinth... RW. Our double-
you, double-ewe. Cézanne might touch

yon roughened fatherly profile with horsehair
warmth of color, bare outcrop of vivid green;
who glimpsed a hopeful artichoke-yet-unseen.
Those who’d impose belief by force have never

known my companionable Lord... in the end
their faith’s in tyranny itself (lost to a God
of shepherds & of lambs). Thy rod, & thy
staff, they comfort me (not destroy : defend)

affectionate friend. & as chloride + sodium
blend into salt of earth – as +&- interfuse &
waltz in each golden atom – as those pillars
(Jachin, Boaz) stand (portals of Jerusalem,

brothers) so th’twin tablets of your Coke-in-
still’d Law unite (at ladder-foot of universal
scale). Nature’s donated golden rule of civil
commonweal (simply : fair, kind & true) folk

(Turk, Greek & Jew) can follow, understand;
& if they climb yet further, might take hold
of that steel cruciflex-anchor (as he foretold) –
bells’ pain-carved gate. Heights’ helping hand.

3.6.12

Lanthanum 9.23

23

In a cabin cradled by snow & tamaracks, sore-
troubled Blackstone communed with his heart
in the night. Traced a fine curve eastward
(grey grainy graphite) from l’étoile du nord

into faint pale green-violet pre-dawn light
(opalescent, sweet). Unknown path, ellipse
of surf-steps... aslant a black inscrutable sea.
Out of blind fogs, a lens-canoe – its bowsprit

like a fiddlehead – frond of solemn fern-barge
in procession (distant funeral, in Colchis).
Suddenly WB beheld (swaddled in azure mist
over womb-dream) a limpid silhouette emerge.

Prisoner, exile – tongueless, handless. Dragged
through penumbral valley toward his doom.
Yet stood there (pregnant salt) so calm!
His frame a phosphorus glee-beam – ragged,

magnificent – thus this penetrating spirit
(meek monk Maximus) rose (knot-bound)
into Blackstone’s sea-scoured horizon – found!
Almond nuptial memoir-ring (moss-green circlet

of rust) hidden in neglected dovecote pockets,
old wild graybeard shepherds’ folds. Still water-
droplets, radiating through irenic granaries
(remote, deep wells). Sheepish prophets

rest secure there, in forested chorale-corral –
bathed in unfathomable réunionyes, who cherishes
frail rightness of each lambkin... O magnanimous
acknowledgment – Joy-Cognizance – O playpen Pal!

3.3.12

Lanthanum 9.22

22

This choleric scholar sticks unto bridgework
of our Commonweal like wax, like gum
the caustic bulls of Boston grumble – loony-
bin’s too goo for ‘um (Blackstone)! some smirk.

All surround me, stare... riding my sweatball
out of town. Salt cleaving to my mouth...
my hapless boneyard, shockloss (gone south,
m’darlin’). Only green lantern of yon soul

am left alone (concertina’d quail – colluding
in concrete St. Paul?). Believe we must leave
the killing out, when all is done, croaks Steve
th’admirable stevedore (prologue for broody-

turtledove’s 6-flagon’d falcon-eye). Moonshine
his horse’s name : who left the dell of a blow-
stump squeal imprinted in Medea-snow
(Medusa-cur). Mingled labdanum w’fine

snift of myrrh, to enhaunt her nautical J-
chamois (dune-croon’d, fiddling coxcomb
runnymedever with gilt guile-odium... some
fie-mint, pap-crush’t, papoose marais-

enfant). His candle was mortal. Lightweight.
Seedy, clearly (not long for this rude road,
by Joad). So Blackstone, Wm. & Wms. (beaded
Thisbe twins, eaglets) fled : felt through the salty

law (égalité) : unto the end. As did the Psalmist
(poor Jay Burrytroy) whose pastel mural-church
(in lambent milieu of Romania) rinses from ash
of books – Bukovina. & Mendelssohn. A misty
*
glissando... lissomeek sheepswhorlsack’s unshorn
Seekonk-continuum (goldbread dark almond oui).
Where ewe-kids frolics Yvonne’s fado fodder-sky
& (eva-hopeful) wonders... so’rs o’ star is bairn’d.

3.2.12

Lanthanum 9.21

21

Gleam on, great halo’d moon (in Hobo’s dream).
Gneiss angle, mica (garnet promotions). Horn
the dark red wine (trombone, Louis). Borne
‘pon multidirectional nuptial smile – eld step-dame,

waning (winsome smith). Beached over leeward
delta, sauntering... planted Pocahontas-canoe.
Parallactic pair of parlous turtles – whose
fin-smooch welds one plummet-sword

octet (Ravlin bluejay... midsummer halcyon).
& that face in N’Orleans moon leans north-
ward, upstream... toward frail martyr-mirth
of’n odd country longbeard (even Henryman).

O wheeling west now, Virginia... ben-Lenten
cruiser. Poor shepherd’s irritable strain
sheer Oz cruxifinnicky-fiction, in th’rain
(as live ammo wells up... tears foundation).

Hobo-pantomime... torch-limb yearning
toward miniature myrrhbox, at censer
of an ear. Where four horses canter
sof-sof boomerangs (purr-purring

char-choir). Hobo files alley frankincense
in portable mirror (Madeleine’s) – saves
daylight goop like bit o’honey (waves
a-tumble, bumblebee). Hence,

knave. Seine once more into sown
bran-grain, cast-along river-ice (grand
brain). Slow, slow, lazy Russian. Spend,
expend your dream, Oblomov (glass-blown).

3.1.12

Lanthanum 9.20

20

So Hobo slips back into sleep, as of old –
where he’s at home (in midst of the earth).
Axes & hammers have ceased their wrath
against wooden parentheses... now hold

only one limpid terrace’s clear air. Morning’s
milky smoke lay bridled there, in its oaktree
tabernacle; the habitations of cruelty
slept like Rome; the turtledove’s moaning

sheltered thy servant’s quivery leaf-shield
(enfolded, plunging salience... lips’ lyre-
lair... foam-shell). At cusp of the year,
when John-John leapt in the wheatfield

of his trove-tomb : at the Jubilee (that
Sabbath-crown – that end-of-Mayan, 52-
pickup, jade-coral hoop-game). O I.O.U.
of every wombat womb-man... O magnet

fiat, implicate – each etched, emboldened
van der Weyden infant, limned – frescoed
afresh, today! Beneath a concrete cloud
of solid dark, the bubble-level (liquid

pearl) suspends its calm, magnanimous balance;
between that sunray in the portal-eye
& crypt of Minnehaha-Paradise (ebony-
spanned ivory 88s) there is a river-entrance...

you’ve been there, Hobo; you swam
with the 28 young braves, under the sun;
the 29th (like overhanging lichen), doubling...
finished (the day). She loved; you are, I am.

2.29.12

Lanthanum 9.19

19

In shady Galilee of a burnt-out Lent
& far from his Mississippi home, Hobo
catches, barely... the slender tremor (low
coign) of his repentance. His recovery tent.

Only an inkling... slight tendering of air.
Through shuddering snakeskin screen –
scaled pattern of dogwood leaves (green
gone rusty). A nest, a tabernacle... lair

of late winter sun. Whose coming-forth
as bridegroom, racing hearth to hearth
is cherished there, in her byre of earth...
in sunset-land (east, west, south, north).

At the antipodes (remotest heights & depth).
And it was like hearing a keen through a pillar
of glass – an orphan cry, looped in a mirror
swerving, like a wing, out to its azimuth

(a still grey glint). Then steep descending
streak through grassland (flashing silver-
gold) plummets into river’s undertow
where (on a bank) his pals are gathering

& smoke (for their wispy signals, lifting,
gone). Our W, he blabs to someone...
JB, J-tree... she plants a wild, sown
key in me, he moans. Soon, son. Swiftly,

arose. Toward yon high room, & the great
Thanksgiving feast – calling all lumberjacks,
winos, sadsacks from Hackensack... Maximus
& Walt shall shofar tout; Madeleine to celebrate.

2.28.12

Lanthanum 9.18

18

Within moist mollusc-husk of February pre-spring
on Prospect St. (outside the French House)
the little witch-hazel behind the wall lets loose
improvisations of gold leaf – her pliant blazoning

pent by chill wind. Early diviner, bent like Hobo
just tipping the keys (in Mendelssohn, maybe).
Leafpile mandorlas of wide gold laid siege to Heidi
there – blonde matrix & epitome (little sorrow-

tree, foretold). Tends thus his balance-beam,
Hobo, upon his shoulder... retrograde flame’s
importunate command, transposing that skim’s
taut-plaited graft. Hurt knight’s lamb-dream

across straitened chafening tightrope (aimless,
airborne). So the arc of arcs curves back
to the crackling hearth of Blackstone’s
own Quauhnahuac (yon implicate rubellipse,

myrrhrose). Limns the sunburst labyrinth
of Chartres, where Hobo inches (inch by inch...),
obswerves the hilarious limp of her firstborn. Cinch,
Blaise. The light’s manifest (emerald absinthe,

Vincent). & all this nonsense for a pin-
pricked star! Scythia-gold (Sheba-forsythia)
above mown grass; a handful of corn will flow
in brooks from the mountaintops (amen, Martin).

Blessed be his redemption-name. Because Love
is unstanchable fire’s (whirl-fabricladding, star-
enflashioning, volcán-swaheeling) sheer choir
y’Hawaii. Moltenscarred heart (hearth-stove).

2.25.12

Lanthanum 9.17

17

Just now, the quiet churchbell plumbed b-flat
across the street. Ash Wednesday evening,
mild as April; watercolor air; soft brooding
drone. Yet thoughts turn round, like Lot

back to that January bridge – the frozen salt
of ice-trapped years (yours, Henry-man) –
the drift-down, say, of one white hexagon
into your palm (taut fiery snow-mote)

...before you go. Into that Resurrection
Cemetery, south of St. Paul... your narrow-
leaf slate silo, camper; your flinty sled, below
Siberian snow-surf (32,000 flakes, fraction

rings of permafrost stenographers). You are
just that far gone, eld Irishman. & yet
your lines declineth too, toward pleasant
faces... I mean the twin cities of Natasha’s

eyes : those agate portals, fusing labyrinth
of threadbare lips – faring with you (by harp
& psaltery) – hoisting you from earthdepth
once again! In limpid eyespan (Arimathea)...

Her tiny snowgrain, set like fire in hearth
a lemon-crumb, a-tingle on your tongue
framed by a train-horn’s rusty iron lung
worn silver now, gone resonant... inclineth

thine ear now, little ant, to green proverb
lifting its brow like tendril of a rainbow-
wing – skyward, through rain & snow
climbing, ellipse (unleavened herb).

2.22.12

Lanthanum 9.16

16

Mardi Gras. Ash Wednesday eve. & if
I sketch RW (or double-U) striding there
through Westerly portal, the whiz-whisper
trumpet of pursed lips his gift

for all – O happy equilibrium of
semaphore-claw, high pining air (all-
human hills). Soon my shifty scribble
shimmers in bleak graphite mote-gleam

(Venus Beats All, lead #2) – takes on
manners of ‘nother (eyebright) hand;
hurrosgamos gathers momentum (land-
ho!) – I seize a ladder up to heaven –

footfall-pyramid of Hobo, Blackstone,
Maximus (hard to explain!). A leopard-
spiral toward universal ensign-standard...
clear coral triangle, minuscule madeleine

of speechcrumb qubitspark – circumzenter
navvy-worm (blue SF-sphere above gate-
prong). & for such hymn she make date
crow last, & verily (her spanner-cantor).

Only a dram of octave-dream, from La-
Soo land up to l'Etoile du Nord. By way
of a crust of snow-crunched pain – eye-
burnt Magdalen, sharp Siena-saint (aha-

delight!) who ran all the way (make haste,
my God!) through the leaden garden gate...
toward you. Maximus designed his ancient
intricate epithalamium (beyond those wasted

poppy-fields) in the moonlit night seasons
of stony Trebizond. Blackstone listened...
squandered coaldust turned to diamond.
Ask JB (Cora Clay... her flotations).

2.21.12

Lanthanum 9.15

15
i.m. M.A.G.

Sunset, walking home up Hope tonight –
a kind of smelter’s glow out of Van Gogh.
A glassblown alloy spun round that rose-
gold eye – sapphire, emerald, set in a tight

brown casket (earthshade). Evening mirror
from a brow just north of Angell Street.
Slim susurrus over the mansion (Italianate,
clad in dark wine) where oak leaves linger –

& you would pine for your conjectured J (vale,
valentine). Imago... my Psyche. So we project
an extended forecast, in familial yokel dialect –
just as you were your brother’s summer double

in that Twin Cities’ dovecote (over the wrinkling
winking river). A part of song (appoggiatura,
grace note) paired with his major delta D –
sprightly, bittersweet, solitaire (a twinkling

clarinet, Octavia). We carry the gilt icon
too close for care : such compatible leanings
as dreams are multicolored coatings, filling
hollers with excess 8th-notes (Pygmalion’s

pig-latin). Hunky dory was the children’s ark
until the last dog bark – a curial star, a rose
of Charon. Then we mourn our double (her ruse
our loss). Under that April horn a’plenty (mark

the date, Sylvester) – by tentative frail tents
of Providence, yearlings of clay. Our moon,
cast in an antique shell (death-mask... pontoon...
fish-fly). Granddad’s bronze bugle. Frankincense.

2.14.12

Lanthanum 9.14

14
i.m. John H. ("Jack") Birss

After much falsework – skittering expenses
in a waste of swaying bucks – Marwan (cinnamon
cat with greenfire eyes) will arch his tendons
through the cunning rug. All’s in play (fearless)

at last. While Diego hunches up the cloudy steps
with shifting temblor on his back – an al fresco
infancy. Fat babies, mild-eyed povero...
Guadalupe-sombrero... so homeliest precepts

prove most beautiful (what’s mine is yours).
But not from nowhere, their swift circular –
great was the public company self-anchored
there, on hinge pipe beam, deadmen, girders

2047 feet from shore to shore (saddled
with sacrificial sections of weakened steel).
It was 28 young braves, lifting centripetal
lightbeams – a pendant, bending self-addled

streams toward soldered reunion (unseen
yet feathered silver, with a yellow crown).
& a 29th bather in ark of oak – unknown
& apostolic turtledove’s ecumenical grain –

her sea-salt shanty’s banked in a riverbed.
Come with me then, down to the water’s edge
where shells glissade from willow-branches
& drafty lyres are granaries (seven-tiered

with light). Where fathers yodel in Mendelssohn
& a 5th of Sibelius, in stately waltz, swings low
her catenary iron ribs. Where birchbark rows
into aurora borealis... (harp-wrung Magdalen).

2.7.12

Essays in Critical Flame

New review essay floats Ben Mazer and John Beer on the sea of Ashbery and TS Eliot :
Jerusalem & Albion; or, Maze & Barleycorn

This is the 2nd essay of mine there. Also wrote one about Gabriel Gudding a while back :
Reading Gabriel Gudding

The epic drive

Knowledge, taken in the abstract - say, by the vulnerable ephebe just starting out in college - displays a frightening visage : abyssal, disorienting, nightmarish. Knowledge, in its authorized, authoritative forms, is demanding (all those martinet-professors, those requirements, those deadlines & examinations), impersonal... fundamentally inscrutable. Say our tenderfoot student is curious about History. The question is, where to begin? If all "facts"are equal... & if the historians, each with their particular perspective and expertise, number in the thousands upon thousands... Indeed, there is a specific demon of angst which persecutes the undergraduate - whose malicious intent is to induce a painful, extremely self-conscious (to the point of paranoia) sense of being lost . What do I know, in the midst of all this formidable universe of chilly and alienated learning? How can I know anything? How can I trust my own feeble capacity to find meaning, to understand?

It is just here (as has often been pointed out) that the arts attempt a rescue mission. Art is synthesis, not analysis; its aim is not to detach elements of experience by means of abstraction in order to re-align them into codes of information, hierarchies of data. Art does not truck with the supposed "objectivity" of formalized knowledge; rather, Art produces holistic representations of experience - images which we need not learn, because we already recognize them. We do not "acquire" these representations - we immediately identify with them. And in these identifications our inward sense of personal understanding is encouraged, fortified, strengthened, and above all, expanded. (Perhaps the paradigmatic expression of this commonality of experience is John Donne's famous passage from Meditation 17 : "No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.")

Is this the happy end of story, then? Art comes to the rescue, trouncing adolescent despair? Well, yes, perhaps. But for the artist the picture may be more complex. How, say, in poetry, are these holistic representations - these charmed and charming narratives, capable of evoking sympathetic understanding and identification - to be successfully created? The endless debates within the various guilds of poets over issues of subjectivity/objectivity, personality/impersonality, individuality/commonality, point toward unresolved difficulties, internal contradictions. How does the poet achieve a balance between self-indulgent, anecdotal subjectivity on the one hand, and a bloodless, abstract objectivity on the other? How few are the poems which succeed in integrating these polarities - in presenting "concrete universals": those characteristic particulars which are nevertheless capable of global relevance.

Works of the past called "great" are just these poems which have achieved a kind of wholeness and universality. The Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare... these are some of the familiar benchmarks - narratives which fuse representative, characteristic individuals, with a shared history - Pound's "tale of the tribe" - the many and the one.

We could call this the "epic" drive in poetry : the struggle to present multiplicity in the form of holistic order. Northrop Frye described this totalizing impulse as the defining characteristic of the epic mode. The works which achieve such encyclopedic synthesis become foundational texts, paradigmatic narratives of peoples and cultures. They construct a kind of aegis or rooftop of mutual understanding - or, to use another image, a sort of network of vital pathways, which encourage individuals to emerge from isolation into the ethos of a shared tradition.

The path toward such epic achievements involves the most intense struggle : because no imagery of wholeness will be accepted as authentic unless it has been earned. It would be impossible for an audience to assent to epic pretensions, if the work itself did not display an indwelling awareness, a comprehension, of actual, lived experience in its heights and depths. The achievement of an epic narrative is thus a kind of celebratory moment - when individual artistic making is matched with the real existence of the whole society.

- to be continued, maybe... -

Lanthanum 9.13

13
for Chris Kraemer

That bridge in your old photo, Chris (beehive
of hexagonal girders, poised in a mirror-
agon of contrastive weight – taut Piranesi-
pattern)... a quick sliver of dove-

wings flits through those ribs. Flotsam
of memory asway below, sheathed
in snakeskin of crusted limestone (teeth,
bone, shells)... only the river seethes, I Am

& only Time will bind these liquidaceous scars
in one eddying canyon-volume : synthesis
or wave-continuum : the hand-or-eye’s
own natural rest note (a fulcrum-focus).

At Prospect Terrace, the statue of young Roger
steps a stilled foot into the bow of his canoe.
Silence marks his brow there too, at prow
of Providence (lips close upon their origin).

What might ye behold there, by glinting granite
glance – through whisper-facets of the river?
On rungs of welded iron, raindrops shiver
in jointed deltoids, whose spinal height

arcs up to Union (forged from a million
bolts of eyebright)... reaches their hands
(mirrored, multiplex) into those wounds
(ineluctable, irreducible – your own). &

shadows of a Piranesi-body (dove-borne,
Pentecostal) rise from the rails of
sunken Soo Line (sun-thorn, whale-
horn)... eyelash of Beatrice-Magdalen.

1.24.12

HG Books in pdf. format

Here's a new way to find a lot of my poetry - free pdf. versions, linked at the Brown University Library catalog. (On each page, just go to "click on the following"....)

Chapel Hill
Dove Street
Forth of July
In RI
Island Road
Lanthanum
Rest Note
Stubborn Grew
Way Stations
The Well Is Always There

Lanthanum 9.12

12
for Karen Donovan (who noticed them)

Here’s a photo – a flock of ducks in the river
swathed in steam-shimmer, lithe silver & gold.
The day itself was overcast, crepuscular; an old
sepia print of Providence (unknown engraver).

Those ducks for certain make a joyful noise
though for us it’s only a tacit Jubilee. &
snow was just a sketch, a promissory
morning sprinkle : 7 wavy scimitars

of moon-flakes, traipsing their descent
to elemental winter ground. It was a sign
for manna from the summer sun – the Son
of Man (intuitive angel of untold ascent,

centripetal within each ice-bound tear)
flutes in the market as predicted – yet
that handish cloud overhead is implicate
with wing-tip folds; yon leafy paramour

Jessie O’Balm’s forming up up there
a demonstration (maybe very gentle rain
later today). Sleep on it, Berryman; let
splay of almond palm undo the nightmare

(this is my prayer). You had an answer in
your own, when rondure of an unkempt heart
spun back upon her yearning path (O startling
Ind). The sprite who knelt beside you there

came dropping slow (like Chesley by shoreline,
shielding struts with ingrained, unaccountable
care). Benign, compounded with the fallible...
infallible & secret element (a sign, cosine).

1.17.12

Lanthanum 9.11

11
for Allen Grossman

Once, on a planet where earth & sky are partners
(emerald & sapphire) emerged an unknown pharaoh
cleft in a dreary mountain... quiet shadow
swimming into sun. He was met with sneers

row upon row, with hosts of angry errors. Then
he began to sing : sweetly mortal, this one,
humble & low as a dusty pigeon : crossgrain
against the chilly currency of that thieve’s den

(for lo, it was a land of bilk & money).
Against Memphis silt his melody set sail
upstream – steel compass shepherding a frail
canoe, whose prow & wake bear one bright V

toward heartfelt matrix (ruby, diamond).
His chant was not unheard-of in that land,
not strange : just passionate echo of grand-
ma’s hymn, & preacher’s reprimand :

a sense of rightness, stubbornly evoked
(tempered to the time at hand). His weapons
two arms crossed upon his breast – someone’s
stern angel, binding warmongers (Wovoka-

avatar). Just shadow of a gray shadow,
or slip of pebbles in a tidal wash : inkling
of forgotten plenitude, laughter’s foundling.
Lost land where river shallows press the bow

toward shore... among warbling lips of
silenced wings – that rosy treasure
chest, where blue & green, & black &
white, I & Thou, & earth & sky are one.

1.16.12

poem published in Providence Journal on 1.13.12

I started reading Tomas Tranströmer's poetry after he won the Nobel Prize - & liked it a lot. The Providence paper printed a slightly garbled version of it on the op-ed page yesterday. Here's the corrected version :

STARS IN THE EARTH

homage to Tomas Tranströmer

The quiet Swede goes for an evening walk.
It’s growing dark already, cold.
Far off, a silent bivouac of trees, asleep
beneath snow-blankets. The gray sea, whimpering.

Overhead, tiny train-lights of stars
skim past the dark station, toward unmapped regions.
His feet slush through old shelves of ice. He feels
the planet sleepwalk – muttering, dreaming, sailing on.

On a gray-green brow, a lonely farm opens one eye.
A star has made its nest on earth. And now
more lights... a constellation swims into the forest.
He’ll christen it “the Hearth” when he gets home.

Lanthanum 9.10

10

The earth, a flaking Roman ampitheatre,
doddering old ham... waiting (by that river
in Vienne) to cradle One who comes, deliver
Him - Emanu-el, the One-with-us (now, here) –

while amid Mayan ruins of Piedras Negras
students pencilling their scribble-diaries
mimic the very pliant sediment they prize
from plaza, limestone crypt, acropolis –

intent on disinterment : one petrified root
of the Archaic One. That buried king, or
child – lurker in the villages, oppressed
oppressor – fatherless, beneath the boot

of evil-doing thugs. Tacit one, who waits &
waits there, in the dump... that groundsman-
gardener (asleep or dead) upon whom Magdalen
trains her indomitable emerald eye (understand

what Iris lurks beneath such blurred-out Violet).
O mudpie innocents, ephebe-gravediggers, I
would join you in your soggy trenches – misery
of the world is quenched in labor so inviolate –

& in the spousal sarabande of Mayan time
inch toward an ur-outcrop of waterfalls :
grave yet lightweight pumice-composite (all’s
figures, Horatio) streaked with lanthanum-

streams of limestone. Where a bass-chorus
swims in droning schools : a fluent solidarity
of Wills (Roger, Blackstone)... & nostra pace
e’en la sua voluntade. IN RI, chanted... for us.

1.10.12

Lanthanum 9.9

9

It was the faintest whisper of the lightest breeze
you felt not heard, the most ineffable lightness
breathing across the river’s curve, at night;
near St. Louis, under the wingèd shroud of trees.

Stillness; quiet; only a creak of cottonwoods
as the bow slips downstream. & you lie back
along ribs & spine... & trace another track
remote, milky (buffalo, or thunderbirds).

A pair of spare steel calipers lean into sky.
A lightweight tripod, anchored from above,
almost; made of open air, its alcove
seems to shepherd weightlessness (a mile-

high smile). You lean against the gunwale,
press your ear into Karelian birch; the veins
thread tiny rivers, seamless as woven spans
of Inca stone; you enter the black-hole tunnel.

& it is so arranged, we never leave
the tender circle of those tight-swathed hills
A light wind-vortex lifts her glittering vessel
(diamond now) on a sigh of joy (heave-

ho!) – a choir of humming fingertips
in unison (their pregnant sails seamless as
woven Incan shroud). Hiawatha-longhouse
of loving fellowship – red-willow slips

of smoke & singing ghosts... the pure air
of diamond-heart, at center of the six
directions. All bound in Magdalen’s hex-
agon : reunion or reconnaissance (ours

be her beatific ninefold choir).

1.9.12