LESSON PLAN

Let me tell you what to do.
I speak with confidence
because I don’t know
anything but the sound of words.
Music is enough for both of us.

2.
Or if you doubt my bona fides
(rhymes with Fridays as we say
those lucky days in Brooklyn)
((lucky: work is done, lust is in))
then try to honor ancestry:
I was born of humans on planet Earth.

3.
As I was saying—
This is what you have to do:
Take every word you hear
as gospel truth.
Accept it, smile, take
down another book and open it.
Every religion says the same:
It’s all up to you.

4.
But we were speaking of
what I want to tell you,
instructions that should last you
all the way to the end of today
when the golden sun sinks
beneath the greening horizon
and another truth comes along,
just as true but much darker,
rub your hands and sing along.

5.
There, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you: sing along,
muzzle your skeptic twitches
and sing along with what comes.
Don’t make me say it all again,
sing along, sing along,
it’s the magic way of listening.

4 April 2023