1 The Saturday morning meadowlark came in from high up with her song gliding into tall grass still singing. How I'd like to glide around singing in the summer then to go south to where I already was and find fields full of meadowlarks
Light over the Hudson recovers a Caribbean I have never seen. We list islands: Molokai, Oahu, Kauai; St. Lucia, Haiti…. The surf folds tunnels of light while a hand folds over a wrist (tell-tale pulse), counting. The long tunnel is a wrist of blown spume.
It is like a dance, I think, this silence full of questions. Pulse-beat; pulse-beat. Pulse. Pulse.
I push my hair back into the memories of palm trees,
MARIA NEFELE: I walk in thorns in the dark of what’s to happen and what has with my only weapon my only defense my nails purple like cyclamens.
ANTIPHONIST: I saw her everywhere. Holding a glass and staring in space. Lying down listening to records. Walking the streets in wide trousers and an old
I know I’ll lose her. One of us will decide. Linda will say she can’t do this anymore or I’ll say I can’t. Confused only about how long to stay, we’ll meet and close it up. She won’t let me hold her. I won’t care that my eyes still work, that I can lift myself past staring. Nothing from her will reach me after that. I’ll drive back to them, their low white T-shaped house
I saw the hand of Rasputin cast in bronze and used as an oversized paperweight on someone’s desk. The authentic hand. Smooth as Italian leather. It was molded from plaster before he was killed. Bought at an auction in Europe. She was a collector. She knew the value of everything.
What large, dark hands are those at the window Lifted, grasping the golden light Which weaves its way through the creeper leaves To my heart's delight?
Ah, only the leaves! But in the west, In the west I see a redness come Over the evening's burning breast — — 'Tis the wound of love goes home!
I had eight birds hatcht in one nest, Four Cocks were there, and Hens the rest. I nurst them up with pain and care, No cost nor labour did I spare Till at the last they felt their wing, Mounted the Trees and learned to sing. Chief of the Brood then took his flight To Regions far and left me quite. My mournful chirps I after send Till he return, or I do end. Leave not thy nest, thy Dame and Sire, Fly back and sing amidst this Quire. My second bird did take her flight And with her mate flew out of sight. Southward they both their course did bend,
Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song in my own breath. I'm alone here in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky above the St. George Hotel clear, clear for New York, that is. The radio playing "Bird Flight," Parker in his California tragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering "Lover Man" just before he crashed into chaos. I would guess that outside the recording studio in Burbank the sun was high above the jacarandas, it was late March, the worst of yesterday's rain had come and gone, the sky washed blue. Bird could have seen for miles if he'd looked, but what he saw was so foreign he clenched his eyes, shook his head, and barked like a dog—just once—
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