Against A Loud Silence

To sing unencumbered by the dead 
to find new ways among the living
as night breaks its vow of silence
letting darkness out

To sing like birds
in passionate anonymity
all swoop and soar
in morning's stunned beginnings

To sing in the shell of time
and wait for echoes from the deep  
the smell of salt and gulls calling   
the always mystery of fogs

To sing our numbered hours
and spin the inner moons of earth
with rarity of simple things like snow
and windows frosted white

To sing an octave above the past
against a loud silence, the extravagance of loss
when all was garden, grace and Eden
where nothing when it happened was enough

To sing faithful to the flesh
the heart's percussion
the naked sprawl of days
a song as old as innocence

                  2

When I was a nightingale I sang
When I was a serpent I swallowed
My voice    spume blown from a wave
a sound too thin for earthworms

With memories older than Prometheus
I remember the time when time was birthed
the sky appeared
sudden light   wind and water
where blind valves closed
on a single grain of sand

In my body of skin   of moss   of clover
I touch fingers to fingers
            lips to lips
            the exposed tip of the heart

Seed work   sun work   earth work
If pansies are for thoughts
I pick them early in the morning
so they last

Lake-summer days I climb the hill
drink the sky and pose like Millet's peasant
listening to an invisible lark

With a pocketful of seeds I sit
peeling an orange under a static sun
attentive to the sound of pine cones clicking open

The child sleeps in my shadow
and walks beside me
following from birth
moving as I move
We cling together like small animals

The well is dry   the cup empty
and gravity is a long way down