song Archives

Shorelines

What may loom, unweaving.

We wanted a story its magic in the key of longing notes we arced like stones from cliffs where we stood the key was carrying the eyes to where the magic was not. Years on a planet would spin us, looking for more of them to name. Here is one, an ordinary song, here is how you survive until the moment when you say back to us here is home and it cuts to remember between places so far full of dead heroes whose spirits won’t quit. We waited, unweaving the ritual to save ourselves. For tomorrow against this siege, and dawn keeps coming so soon.

The Residents

Between shores.

In here, the past is paper fragments. We gather them up and try to remember. One sings. The song happens in the middle of a room. The occupants of the room are engaged in various tasks. The tune is off, the phrasing disjointed. No one minds.

In here, only new arrivals worry about death. We all did, says a veteran resident. But you get over it. How? We want to know. The resident explains how something breaks. It’s like a levee and you let it because it won’t be stopped. The flow is too fast and the volume too high.

Besides, the resident adds, you can float. Besides, the resident adds. You’ll land somewhere. Eventually. Now, we let it take us when it comes. We float in this narrow strait, washing between shores according to the tides. Paper is gone now, but songs pass through, sometimes.

Storm Surge

And a turning point.

In the waiting room, I wanted

to say–––something, because

such places, with their anxious hum

always seem to want relief. From

the pretense of containment,

or into song. But when it was time

I left and the hot wind hit

my eyes which slid across

folded falcon wings as if

to learn how my own hands

clutching plastic bags

might know that poise.

A nest nearby, its swallow

gone, a lilting plainsong

behind me. I turned, eyes

wide, to trace the mouth

of the storm’s long suggestion

in the ears as though to

blow me empty. Howl,

I wanted then, as now, to

share some sighting

with another face.

Vigil

Over what perches.

The feathered chest-dweller

coughs. We cannot hear

her song. We gather

at the ribbed rafters,

a motley congregation

of morose faces, to wait,

sensing her watch.

Perhaps she wants

something now,

but there isn’t a crumb

among us.

Then comes a low hum,

spreading through the nave

of our assembly until

our mouths drop the lines

that seal them.

Opened, we pour out

syllables of grief

too sharp to speak,

that she may absorb

enough to form

an echo.

***

Responding to Dickinson.

Star Light, Star Bright

Following crumbs, far from home.

When our rhymes ran off with the sheep,

trees fell, and then people from windows.

Goodnight moon, we whispered.

The cows ran after it. Jack knocked

over the stick, another forest

burned. Ashes, ashes.

Another statue had a great fall:

the unclothed emperor of the wall

by which the city blocks the sun.

See how they run, our minds

in time. The farmer had a dog,

and the dog went first.

There has to be a better story.

There is.

It sings somewhere,

of the dark times.

It does not rhyme. Apollo

in a minor key, now

dissonant, refuses

the obvious path.

Still, a song exists.

Where?

Here, from this dense

night. Howl.

The Use of Form

Bodies of work.

One advantage to poetry is that requires no heavy apparatus to carry around. Only this body, heavy enough when conscious. Unconscious, the form is dead weight, nearly impossible to move. And yet, when awakened to its fullest extent, nearly weightless. Here again is another advantage to the form. Of poetry, of the body.

Both remind. This is how it is possible to float, vertically tethered and horizontally webbed. In this poem, our feet in the earth may stir the unborn forest. In this poem, someone calls across the sea, Friend. Across and between each continent and each impossible divide.

Friend, this speaker calls. Don’t dismiss me to the murmuring masses you mean to float above. Friend, comes this voice, hold fast to me. These bodies, in the end, are all we may carry, and nothing but their given songs. Put up your sword, friend. Each must be held, or nothing holds. We are going to need both hands.

***

Inspired by the work of Tomas Tranströmer.

Music for Digging

Thoughts on getting down with it.

Here’s an invitation to stomp through the track-lit hallways of an administration building and sing in a waiting room, wailing exhalations of various shapes.

Consider this a reminder not to chase the light too hard, to balance those ethereal divinities with the ever-present nuisances of daily demons.

Against the weight of daggered baggage, here’s the forgiveness of emptiness. Over the round hoop of the ancient zero like an open mouth, weave a nest for the unborn and make it big enough for the recently departed.

A body will reveal its resilience in rest, holding until only spirit is left, leaving calligraphic marks on the skins it brushed.

Song is a mother. She is working in the dirt and it is everywhere.

***

Inspired by, and with borrowed images from Spencer Kornhaber‘s recent Atlantic article, How to Listen to Björk, According to Björk, regarding the artist’s latest album, Fossora. The title comes from the Latin word for digger.

A Soft Touch for Depths

For the seeker in the dark.

You weren’t always sure you were writing poetry, only that your words could mean something to the truck driver, the soldier, and the one closing the bar. You had harsh words for critics too quick in judgement to listen to what they were not expecting to hear. With both feet in soil, you celebrated the ancient of ancients, and were not too proud to honor what eluded your knowing.

Prone to embrace strangers far and wide with a gaze bent on honoring how the best of the wonders each carried was in tune with an old and ancient song, you could not stop yourself from humming as it moved through your working bones––that which stains dark and touches soft, with a flair of great loneliness, those also softly treading, searching in the dark.

***

Over coffee, I noticed that on this day in 1967, the American poet Carl Sandburg died (born 1878), and I decided to spend some time reading a journal article Sandburg published in February 1916 edition of Poetry Magazine, praising the (often misunderstood and maligned, at the time) work of Ezra Pound. I find that a person tends to reveal a great deal by the bend and texture of their admiration. I borrow some of Sandburg’s phrases (italicized) above, praising Pound, and blend these with ideas commonly attributed to Sandburg’s work.

For the Birds

“i hope i die
warmed
by the life that i tried
to live”
–Nikki Giovanni

**Image:** Regent Honeyeater by Michelle Bartsch on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivs 2.0 License

The regent honeyeaters of Australia have been dealing with a serious problem. It started in the usual way––with their massive disappearances, caused by habitat destruction; but this is a different problem, one left to those remaining. Apparently, there aren’t enough mature birds around to teach the young males to sing. The new guys are doing their best, imitating the songs of other birds and sometimes improvising here and there, but the females of the species are listening for some very specific notes. If she doesn’t hear them, mating season can’t go on as usual. The problem is raising alarms among ornithologists worldwide. One solution is to bring some birds in on a sort of contract basis, like visiting professors. Early trials of this method are promising.

Humans have a hard time resisting the impulse toward anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, and most other inclinations toward turning a given fact about the natural world around something applicable to human behavior. As one, I can’t help thinking about all the time we’ve ever wasted teaching anyone anything except with the impulse toward song at the center. Doing or not doing this becomes a matter of species survival. Maintaining protected spaces for development and nourishing of song becomes a matter of fundamental security. Maintaining an ecosystem in order to ensure that an emerging song, when it finally surfaces, will not be drowned in a constant din of noise, becomes a matter of painstaking vigilance, as with the protection of any species of newborn life, anywhere.

Live at the Apocalypse!

Let’s go! someone said, meaning to the apocalypse. I thought it was coming to us.

Let’s go! someone said, meaning to the apocalypse.
I thought it was coming to us.

Sure, but let’s meet it.
What do we bring?

Whatever you want. Everything! But you may have to check it at the door.
Will there be snacks?

No, just a single unrestricted feast.
Dress code?

The less, the better.
What else?

Bring every ending, every lilting note of your unuttered cry––
What about the pets?

Well, obviously the dog comes with.
And the cat?

You know cats. I suggested this morning and she just gave me a look.
Like, “Again with this apocalypse?”

I think she’s probably done a few already.
What about the sleeping arrangements?

Have you been listening? Who’s sleeping?
Will there be singing?

At first, only silence, and then, there will only be singing.