To Live on Air
Wholeness reckoned
as a stream,
beauty tossed
as scarves
at a bazaar,
the meal never served
as want becomes
the cellos
in the piece, music
emanating
from two griefs.
Sighted and recited,
words repeat
their vow to live
on air, ashen as leaves
under a stone
or faces in a photo
speaking as if meshed
In half-lit prayers.
As night prepares
its jewels, the play
begins when
Prospero works
his charms by which
a world appears.
lucid as the song of dust
played upon a page of notes.
as a stream,
beauty tossed
as scarves
at a bazaar,
the meal never served
as want becomes
the cellos
in the piece, music
emanating
from two griefs.
Sighted and recited,
words repeat
their vow to live
on air, ashen as leaves
under a stone
or faces in a photo
speaking as if meshed
In half-lit prayers.
As night prepares
its jewels, the play
begins when
Prospero works
his charms by which
a world appears.
lucid as the song of dust
played upon a page of notes.
Ballad
“An ethereal wind chorus opens the second scene.”—Stanley Sadie
The white of wings, stranger
To this air, recumbent, in October,
without fog or robes of silk
To twist across the sky. An hour
can be melody or bird
as we place our kindest
selves into the world,
which wears our sorrow
as a lover the scent
of her beloved. How
we wrest distance
from its map,
the funereal mums ordinary
as containment, the eucalyptus
tattered as a guest in from a storm.
Place me in the earth,
and I will breathe
for years. Lock the doors
to the actual and let the world
mime its slow retreat
into dusky grapes and glistening bell
The white of wings, stranger
To this air, recumbent, in October,
without fog or robes of silk
To twist across the sky. An hour
can be melody or bird
as we place our kindest
selves into the world,
which wears our sorrow
as a lover the scent
of her beloved. How
we wrest distance
from its map,
the funereal mums ordinary
as containment, the eucalyptus
tattered as a guest in from a storm.
Place me in the earth,
and I will breathe
for years. Lock the doors
to the actual and let the world
mime its slow retreat
into dusky grapes and glistening bell
Did I Tell You?
"The Kansas City Stomp was not written in Kansas City ."-- Jelly Roll Morton
How you were
made of words,
on a lazy Sunday
when letters hovered
like birds against
winter's white
sky, how on
the borders
of the page
the indifferent field
Was absent of
decorative stone
or stream, how
you were
an expenditure
of voice
and stranger still,
said nothing.
Born of love
and its omissions,
time and its
corrections,
memory's trap-door,
the song is
a limit,
the smallest
bridge to
the next hesitation.
How you were
made of words,
on a lazy Sunday
when letters hovered
like birds against
winter's white
sky, how on
the borders
of the page
the indifferent field
Was absent of
decorative stone
or stream, how
you were
an expenditure
of voice
and stranger still,
said nothing.
Born of love
and its omissions,
time and its
corrections,
memory's trap-door,
the song is
a limit,
the smallest
bridge to
the next hesitation.
Fossil
Soul and signature
conceived of egg and feather.
Nothing liquid or envious of
flight: plank of stone,
orphan sundered from narrative's
how and why. Where you stand,
no solidity for lamp light or
summer's late full moon.
You register the hardness of stone,
the solid geometry of words,
fleeting, without allegory
to hold desire, you form a circle
of your want, enclosing space.
conceived of egg and feather.
Nothing liquid or envious of
flight: plank of stone,
orphan sundered from narrative's
how and why. Where you stand,
no solidity for lamp light or
summer's late full moon.
You register the hardness of stone,
the solid geometry of words,
fleeting, without allegory
to hold desire, you form a circle
of your want, enclosing space.