New Work

GHOST

It wasn’t just fear
that lured the ghost,
provoked him to lay on hands,
re-voice the sounds of birth,

but also this undertow
inside the body,
the memory of loving people
best when pulled under...

when impaled on their anchor,
a deep-sea hunting for the
sea-horse our water-born bones
still dream to ride.

TONIC MINOR

Cycling the north coast I think of the birth of cool
as a blue jay follows me, darting and dipping like Miles.
The sound is not ours alone. The trumpet in the darkened
club, dense with grief, with revelation, rises out of the blood
of all Earth’s creatures, out of the light that sinks into every
frantic eye. I know this bird is not sorrow, I know this bird
is not grief, but the dark clouds suckling the hills are almost
the breast that fills the baby—almost the waves that slow the
backbeat to make the human swoon. I am riding north to
escape this body, to encourage the wind in its persistent desire
to change us. I am riding bird and I am alone, like the giant
onstage whose eyes glaze to increase the miles, who welcomes
shocks from the road, the sudden lightning, because birds can
sense when the earth is about to give, the symbols will hush…
when the sister mysteries will blow out the final note we love.