where before there was only silence.
Strings being bowed and plucked.
Feet tapping. Hands knead
against a board. A pounding staff.
Call and yelp. Water a-gurgle. There’s
a music in my head like a clearing in the woods.
Do you hear it? Lips on the flute. Winding
through the reeds. I was lost, so lost,
the path too thin to follow. It was dark.
Couldn’t see a damn thing in those pines. But
now the blue-green day brings its sound
of honeysuckle and mushroom. The slim trees
bend and beckon. The naked clover wants
to be touched. Everything clusters and bursts.
The notes scale the hollow. The notes run
to the ridge, then over they fall, water down
the rocks like a laughing, like a laughing.
The bow goes over and under. A fiddling.
A fondling of butterflies in the hint of spring.
The first bee in the clutch of the sweet. I am
singing my way out. I am singing my way out
of the brickyards, from the stones.
Listen for me in the clearing. I can’t keep this
to myself.
Menu