Caul for my comfort
or do I mean a different word,
morning means confusing
what I dream with what there is,

Caul to wrap round,
or call out to thee?

because all the old words
are still living in the night.

2.
Now silenced by sun.
Who are we today,
brave pilgrim,
on time’s turnpike
asphalt softened from summer heat?
I mean wake up in me
natural as a ball of twine,
uttering secrets orderly
one tug at a time.

3.
These days I miss the sea
though the river brings some of it to me,
fjord that it is, firth our word?
But only with the whole
sea can I or music be
continuous. Otherwise
it’s just one song after another,
wren at the window
last night you heard.

4.
Ah you, the diamond of my days,
you are where you are
when nothing is where it is.
You tilt the light so I can see,
you coax wildlife to give
singing lessons to the lifelong child,
bluejay jive and chipmunk chatter,
speaking strictly, like a flower.

5.
But do not name it
so early in the day.
Let it be music
if it must, rivers of,
sensuous legato
rifling the silences,
is that an oboe
or a little girl crying
softly over a torn dress?
Should I waste the music
trying to find out what it means?

6.
Suppose a spoon.
It does what nothing
else quite can do:
lift a little liquid
to your lips. We must
have spoon nature
in us, since we give
a little taste of us
to you and you, only a little
and hope you like the taste.

7.
Anyhow, that’s what the music said
while I listened to the loud piano,
sound is such a paradox,
it comes so far to touch the skin,
child Mozart memorizing
Palestrina, some such story,
stories too are music, come
from far away to touch us as they can.

                                                          27 July 2020