Aural imagery
I saw a sound. It rattled the bones of the last days of a time. That time of frayed signposts. Or times. The time was current. The time moved past futures. The time was possible, and all of us at stake. Now I watch for it everywhere, in hope of hearing. It is everywhere, but my eyes are not so good, having been too thoroughly trained by all that would erase her appearance.
No roosting here
The birds will tell you. Watch. Take this one, for example. This strident singer, pausing mid-trill to make the expression that translates loosely to never mind. This upon finding herself in the company of another kind of bird than she expected. The place to which instinct had led her had changed. The other bird is frightened by these strange notes. They belong in an elsewhere that used to be here. Now it may be nowhere. She makes sounds that translate loosely to it’s okay. Once calmed, the frightened bird returns to singing the familiar notes of the region. The now silent stranger waits, nodding, then flies again, wings sighing. It had been so long between landings. The next will be longer.
Now she remembers. There is a way to stay in flight while sleeping. Hold the wings. Let the currents do the work, move only to pivot and slice between them when you must. Decide there is no other place but this flight. Forget wanting to land. Here is the song. She pulls it to her, full and close.
calling to attend
Bells break. Reminders back to something, another order. Which?
I break. Wanting to remember what once mattered, and how.
Break now. You are not this dull waste, but more. Who?
An offering
Call the mind a flower atop the stem of someone swaying, fragile, rooted. Call its opening an invitation to the ones in flight. Like, come and see. Take part of me when you leave.
When suggesting.
What I mean
is that I mean to remember
where meaning is murdered.
What I mean
is for what
lives and where
it may.
The art of doing nothing
In the silence of satisfied (although perhaps guarded) anticipation of victorious arrival, one spoke. Wait, said the one. Let us be sure that we know what we are doing. Many laughed.
In the deepest dark, a body will not recognize its own fall. This is protective. Who wants to know when they are downer than they seem? What follows is total upheaval. An eye opens.
Before recorded time
You don’t have a name for what you are in until you’re leaving it. Sometimes, to move, you have to try to give it words even when the blasts keep interrupting, even when the words you have fail to satisfy the genre of official record.
arriving to address the assembly
i can’t believe this, you say again,
& keep on. as though to sing
that song of yours in strange words
we do not know. despite myself
you say––
[or in spite of?]
[to spite. the blast]
against scattering & by way of explanation
of why you ––anything. we are skeptics
of this logic & think you are creatures
who do not know what you are
perhaps because you insist on asking
what is this & why
[scatter. return]
we think maybe this is your only song
we think you want help with the singing.
we have seen you watching so we came
for we are the ones who come & go.
A refrain
I am thinking about the way things go today, still meaning to learn what people mean when they say that’s how it goes–––
as it goes–––
about what is leaving and how it happens a little at a time and then all at once, la rêve du monde slipping into a well of missing words and I would prefer to be less aware of being little more than bereft wading through the river of it rushing out, looping a single refrain, please.
Beyond calculation
Why
pay tribute before the tribe anoints
pay attention before the stage announced
pay each always before the deserving?
Because
I offered nothing
to deserve
the breath of this life
still here, this reckless
offering.
