1.17.15

Polished Brass Joyousness

wait with me here until the rain stops.

i think but do not say lichen faces melt

into real ones. they wont look at us,
they allow us first turn to speak.

the sky played games with us.
from dark to light it went, as morning ought.

there was even a vague horizon; a longhorn

dismounted fog. moments later even the

charcoalest of grays were undistinguished

again from the utter dark
you persist driving in.

my song you protected
between your teeth like a sheath, held,
under the ID in your wallet, like saints relic.
what the soil offers as reason is kept too,

only the cold colorless sky recognizes
my tune travels the nethers of me

drinking in the earth,

sweet taste my joyousness
would fit into a plot with the beets
and winter cabbages.

new green growth i will name after you
and what my roots whisper about this i cannot

hear, it is that bass. stars so low tonight, yet back

brightly at me like the polished brass winged

instrument eyes you have always

laughed at me with,

before this burnished horizon where churns now

the poplar tulip before me, butter on mashed,

in the headlights, ripped off is its broad shoulder.

 
whats left hangs patient as a crag enmeshed
in the ridge your knuckles make on my sloping
plains like at the bottom of Texas, where they pull

to the wrong side to let a stranger pass,

were he in a hurry.