Earth Music

Say it, no ideas but in things.—William Carlos Williams

I

Wolves howl
Mixed with wind ...

I see you in the varves
Of her life
Thumbing the pages

Eyeing the sorption
Which the vedic traces foresee

That exist, like an aspirin of logic exists,
Only as beef in the eye of a dog.

The howl of the pack
On crusted spring snow

Worn delicate by time and desire
And the long trek

Down the road of winter
And over the layers

Of tuberculin thick air
Ripped from the stack of warm embraces.

—All of this misdirection obscures
The task of living again
And on all at once. ...

—And while you might see
That harried deer in sleep

A dream arises incidental—
Where you are drawn, sketched

In a rush of emotion—
To where the air

Is distantly related
Ever so slightly

The adjustment is off—
And the next day

You long for a place
That is not yet existent—

A lock you slid into
And turned—

A street corner
Adrift in newsprint—

A verse broken
Across the verb
Of a local sun—

Where you listen closely
To the folded self—

Unfold and unfold, unfold—
And read again the music

Poured into the interstices—
A layering agate

Dropped in the pond—
Riding the wave

Of the music home!

II

Strangle vine
Grows in a crack

Allows the hummingbird
To drink its eye.

In its next life
He will be Huitzilopochtli

Gathering nectar
In a small glass vial.

A pre-Columbian
Vase in which an outline of

A single young man—
Walks Lake Superior's

Rocky shore
An atalatl in his hand—

He found a rock, an agate,
The color of my eye—

And shot a dart into me
That keeps bringing me back home.

Copyright © David Dwinell 2003