How quickly the sounds outside turn
From trance to threat:
A tap once too quickly, a gasp too plangent.
Every time I pick up my pen, I am up against
A palimpsest of cliché — natural expression.
I don't know what a good musician is
But I know good music
And hear it almost every time I play
With my ear.
Dance to the bitterness.
The sweet heat is
Sweeping
The moping prisoners
Squeeming to get away
Into a pleasurable trance.
The hollow wing ascending,
The croak billowing
Over the deknotted, labial lands
Shading them like a cloak one sees from below
And scarcely understands, yet yearns to know
Of this something promising reward,
This evidence for hope
Sends hope springing in hot pursuit of an object
It can outrace.
Only the eyes burn away
Like seed shells falling...
Chamomile grass, fuchsia, spath
Sassafras stalks in a flax field
Ripe with lobelia,
Calanchoe, colendura, catmint
In a mind that remembers
That the sunlight received is commuted to flower
(As ears of bone transfer inside, to the net,
What, once in, is engraved in stone)
Whose only purpose
To attract
Pecky nosy birds:
There are no prim vanities in the bush,
No crafted aesthetic pursuit.
Beauty is just a response to the threat of extinction.
We pick the stem,
Dismember it to show our love.
Love was required by the pining stamen and pistol.
Love is what is sought,
But it cannot be given, only received;
The thing does not reside in the beauty.
On either side,
Terms are laid out
As if in opposition.
Both lovers and enemies stalk you,
Both lovers and enemies listen.
Matted with all the arcane simulations
That preceded your introduction,
You heard them all as well as we,
Heard them so well, we listen to you
Because we don't want to hear them again.
Out of boredom, we are prepared for the insanity
Of your combinations.
You must keep on challenging us
Even when, after stoning you for so long
We are finally allowed to ignore you.
Keep on blowing history out of your pores
And sucking it back in with conscious, hesitant breaths
With the generous passion for hoping
We can, must go on again.
