midmorning
color of the trees
changing vowels
in the middle of the word
mean what the sound says
for a change
but the old-fashioned wire
still stretches
from sender to receiver
just like any sky
blue when She is yellow
otherwise otherwise.

2.
Gravamen, the bedrock
meaning of what you mean
that’s what the day
insists on hearing—
tune your tubes accordingly,
the hollow hurry of your breath,
leave your damned lute unpluck’t
and shout your song.

3.
But how.
Moo-cow on the meadow
baa-lamb in the byre.
Be young. Younger.
Babies howl, children whimper,
adolescents sulk.
Get loud. The cloud
is waiting to part
at your command.

4.
I tell you these bold moves
but mouse along myself.
That’s what comes of knowing Latin,
reading books, watching women
slyly from the corner of the missal,
eating oats for breakfast,
being Irish and other lies.
I don’t have the chutzpah to be real,
I slink along in shadowland
murmuring my dialects
but at least I leave you hints
along the way. This way.

5.
Why can’t this be
a long poem about the Nile
from mountain Africa
a land so flat they had to build
a pyramid to touch the sun.
Why can’t this flow
long and natural and gleaming
full of interesting dangers
crocodiles and princesses
fetching Moses from the stream.
Or did she hide him there herself,
this little Lenin of the pharaohs
who led the workers
dryfoot through the image of the sea
always looking for the truest mountain?

6.
See how soon I forgot the river
green and silky
just as much here as anywhere–
you know I’m still talking about vowels,
what else is there ever to say?
Love hovers like a dove above—
all resemblances are dangerous and true.

24 January 2021