1.
The fever plants
of the Tampa coast
help the music
to decide.
Whistle or wander,
warble or wait.

Wade
with me
in the shadows.

Shallows.
We belong
to what we hear.

2.
The notation is usually
accurate, the performers
sober and alert, the cellist
hides behind her instrument,
the blatant trumpeter
of course has to blare on
even though a modest type
himself. (But why choose brass?)

Outside, the low wind
stimulates the chemical habits
of those mystery plants
said to cure faints and fevers–
brassica family, like leafy kale
but pale. The sea celebrates
just beyond the quiet leaves.

3.
We need these things.
It can’t all be Chopin, Debussy,
another kind of rigor is required,
growl of granite, lust of limb,
someday they’ll let us out of school.

4.
Music for midnight—what kind
if you had to choose?
Wind or water? Name that tree?
Which king of France
built the coast of Normandy?

To be simple about it,
the Hungarian prairie
is very far away. And yet.

5.
Is it cold enough to be tomorrow?
What did they mean
when they asked that?
Fine tune your sweaters before breakfast,
buy roses from the south?
Radiator’s warm, fridge gurgling.

6.
We’re still here for a little while,
as I heard a wise man say
as we stood together on the plain
counting hilltops on horizon,
here a while and then an answer,
condescends. Descends I think
was meant but there goes
that music again, this or kiss,
albatross or arabesques, help
or harry, or marry, or just
this sun in calm trees now,
blue ointment of sky
a function of our longitude.
Far away as it is, I pray
I mean I think I hear the sea.

20 September 2020