no music, only the daylight, the green

of the trees growing, so fresh and bright,

imagine a leaf, a single one of them

held to your cheek, in its chill,

its refusal of heat, this early in the year,

the stars so far from here, the birds

in their lightness going about their business

from branch to branch, impossible gatherings

of bone and feather, as some say

souls might be, freed of

thought’s gravity, the firmness that forbids

our flying, my flying, my alighting

there on the rooftop, or a sill’s edge,

a few ounces of attention, a sharp eye

and a sure perch on the improbable fact

of being, elbow to the mind’s grindstone,

the incongruous image, I mean, the images

that suddenly flutter from a bush,

there is a bush, of as mysterious an origin

as the birds themselves, whose

chattering breath punctuates the air,

scattered through the poem, this poem,

as random as the stars, still there,

though silent and so beyond me,

but signs of life, nonetheless, a sort of music

in the morning, a secret mode :

what might be called a mystery

once begun there is no end to it, the enquiring look,

the ear open to the composing mind, she it is,

she gazes out across the page, draws the first of sounds

she hears, sets the instruments there in some array, then

audits everything for every second of the time she

orchestrates: as every poem has its here and now, so

every here and now has to be heard, hearkened to,

every tick and stream of air attended to, every tremor

of the breath felt and registered :

so it goes :

every gasp, from first to last, to be accompanied,

every swell and wandering off from where

she welcomed it, every hint of waiting,

halting for a pause, every tap

of interruption, towards the end,

every tension fleshed, to unfold again,

every note its consequence,

sound its signalling,

sense its silence :

so it goes

See now, the flame dims, the hand

holds out against the wind, with this

in mind : some sustenance as to

continuing, the trouble dragged home

to its unhappy bed, the rest long

dreamed of, from too steep a climb,

the trudge uphill, clambering for air,

as close to earth as can be, only,

the breath regained, to descend again,

as had to be. No one hears from there,

since sound ascends, and there’s no

answering, no ear so encompassing

to hear how, from such a height,

the burden of a prayer might

one night be heard. Or the light

of one man’s life aflame

find its way across the stream,

if only to begin again.