When Marco fell into the river pool
(Falling by way of swinging from a tree-tied rope)
He pulled into a ball,
Knees to chest
Then the slight concussion
When his taught brown body
Collided with cold.
Pressure rushed up into his nose
And except for the rush of white water
He sank in silence,
Currents asking his clench to release
Moving between and beneath his limbs
Tilting him over in a slow spinning roll.
How long to hold he asked
And let one eye open,
Saw the blurry silver and sunlight over,
Surface and shimmer calling him up.
He held seconds more,
Sinking, hold, hold, hold.
Above the screech of two neighbor girls
Making story in noise
Eyes wide with the question
Of what happened to Marco.
Marco slipped in the secret hold
Of just a moment alone
In the privacy of the river pool.
January 22, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Jim's Politics
I saw Jim’s jaw tighten when he sang about a growing movement- larger circles of men joining together to bring light into the darkness, to bring sweet nectar into the upturned open mouths of gaping need. Now is the moment. Capture this will-never-come again day. Take back what was before. Don’t you know this is the last chance?
A candle burned in a small bowl that he had placed at the center of our circle, a deliberate placement, slow, silent, to say we are starting here, today, together.
For my part, I sank into the chair and lowered the bill of my hat as Jim pulled farther out front. A man to the left of me shifted and a second tipped his bottle to his lips.
I sang back to Jim from my inside voice- a soft caress of contradiction. You want and others want and everyone needs and no one can find the nectar that will forever quench this thirst. Momentum comes without brave horns and clatter of campaigns.
Momentum that precedes change accrues through the little by little, instant by instant, small one-day-at-a-time slips toward the fault. We will both be surprised at the shape and instance of its arrival.
What I wish for, Jim, is a singer who sings of beginning and end as points in a much longer line, who sings in a gut-punching chant as they must have back and back, before memory and on past even the inception of language, where words and concepts make no attempt to instill an illusion of shape-
Do you know any songs like that?
January 17, 2010
A candle burned in a small bowl that he had placed at the center of our circle, a deliberate placement, slow, silent, to say we are starting here, today, together.
For my part, I sank into the chair and lowered the bill of my hat as Jim pulled farther out front. A man to the left of me shifted and a second tipped his bottle to his lips.
I sang back to Jim from my inside voice- a soft caress of contradiction. You want and others want and everyone needs and no one can find the nectar that will forever quench this thirst. Momentum comes without brave horns and clatter of campaigns.
Momentum that precedes change accrues through the little by little, instant by instant, small one-day-at-a-time slips toward the fault. We will both be surprised at the shape and instance of its arrival.
What I wish for, Jim, is a singer who sings of beginning and end as points in a much longer line, who sings in a gut-punching chant as they must have back and back, before memory and on past even the inception of language, where words and concepts make no attempt to instill an illusion of shape-
Do you know any songs like that?
January 17, 2010
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