gray music seeping
like black water through stones,
raw in the line and beat
smelling as bone and fuel,

she crosses the water
a fog, worrying
the river to waves, beating
like a snare against metal bow,
i believe she would sink
if not for the music
and the ****** of a distant god.

within a lowering gray sky
a sun, brighter indescribable, grayer,
penetrates not to gleaming slide,
but her smoky *******,
making her shadowless
and above it all;
song.  

naked, working,  
pushing her mile
upon mile, a commandment,
to become as arresting gear,
quietly succumbing
to her mechanical graces
until the final passing notes.

i must complete
this morning's traditions,

smoothly as best i can,
transition the dead bolt turning.

there is the feast to
prepare,

eulogies to compose
to heroes frozen to the floors
of transit points,

vast blue-iced miles
alter nothing

no amount of looking can change
the distant truth

that these wrinkled traditions
possess us

like great white birds flying
to siberia,

i am old here without
your tongue

it is foreign,
as foreign as yours and mine.

blackbirds rise
to grey october as they have
and will, gathering in

worshiping flocks
growing in number, moving
with one thought, as one
body.

they are in numbers
such that the sound of wing
and caw, blankets me
below

in the mystery that lies
beneath the beauty,
above both,
the precision.

and i stand struck with no question,
mixed fear and gratitude,
praising as them,
the same god.

father of the bells swinging.
great weights
to give praise while
we set aside our silent
alleluias.

what gives us
cause to build with
symbols, brick upon
storied pages, is

the opportunity
to teach us
generosity,
could there be a
greater gift than that?

we seek unusual
beauties, a flower
in a dying woman's hair,
bearing witness
of the fresh
clean linen
table cloth,

hidden there small
flecks of flesh
and spotted blood,
we become,
swinging in the
breath of god,
as sounds
from the bells
summoning us
to sleep.

the slack hours
of morning 
in grateful silences,
calm room, a promised sun 
not yet cleared 
the marvel of horizons, 
focuses.

i cast off sleep and
dream and 
look for ways 
in to that thinly 
settled country. 
i should beg 
to trespass yonder, 
beyond even that.

further yet to where 
escaped poems sing,
wildly, nightly. unfamiliar
comfortable terrain.

i pull from 
that darkness
the next slickening 
tendril of thoughts 
clodded with words.

and with it 
fresh in my hand
and before i drop it,
as an old man would
on to the hard floor 
of brittle memory,
i commit it to a vague 
electronic permanence.

again and often enough
until it forms whole
as the sun clears
the marveled horizon
and my wondering
resumes.

i have traveled a long way
to be waiting in a cheap motel

passing time reading the words
of dead russian poets

waiting for you to arrive.

four am is especially bleak,
and no restless sleep is
as purely restless,

no sound
more angry forlorn and
temporary than cars on the
highway besides.

i would never know by your voice
filtered by space and electronics

what is moving through you.
i must look in to you.

so i wait now for you to knock,

alone in the company of
pasternak's tears

until i see you and understand you
are well.

like mountains that push their way slowly upward

fingers prying at the edges of frayed paper

tongues dry from ******* hot air

my heart beats in my neck and wrists

and i know



how one can cross vast plains on wheels of love

pulled and pushed towards an end

impossible and distant.

how one can lay spent, exhausted

doubting what is meagerly ours.

counting what is lost and gained.

living and dying as desert river
at the whim of the wheel.



like mountains moving by inches towards the coast,

nostrils flared by the acrid smell of burning life,

eyes red from looking and looking,

my flesh tenses

and i know



how one can settle to birth an immigrant wind

and change without knowing,

half way home,

the place and direction we travel.

our name and kinship,

perfect water.

until the final lovely steps

and we lay asleep in the arms

of our past.



like mountains falling,

tops rounding with time,

eyes focused on coming showers,

lungs full and clean,

my heart beats in my neck and wrists

and i know.



that this instance, this place, these hands and arms that

soon will rest,

shall work and make and design and drive

and i know

that this time was the perfect time

to have stood with you and carved our names

in the rock that is our history.