to listen...

moon,

why I do

not listen

long enough?

I need more

of birds

and their strained

bravery

even the jay’s

loud crusade,

or finch, or wren

to perforate

this cotton

 dawn.

The voice in the bowl

of my throat

holds an ounce of you,

 and the steady

 tremble of its spoon

is dipped in sound,

a ditch at once

deep and cryptic

yet never sprung or sung,

 never sprung or sung.

Moon, if you were

a tool

of music

 you would be wood-

wind,

a flute,  a fife,  

of maple, or cedar

 or African blackwood,

their years rooted

to a something of you,

 the you who rose

 and set,

night against night,

within them.

It’s here where

 you inspire

  

a beginner’s

deep-scored inhale

a held  

first breath,

until

 what exhales

 are atoms   

  depth charge

sinking to the last

breath to detonate.  I expect

  

 something unmeasured,

yet deliberate.

 See?  I need more

ear…

All of this

because I’ve

 not swallowed

enough of you.

I am yet eyes

and hands

 and cannot

 touch you…or see…

My breathing

is a deceptive penetrator.

It is unmooring.  I choke,

 hold my throat.

but wind…wind is

a pressed finger

or a hover

above the hole, or

the ear alone

 that tunes the letting go.

I am no oboe,

or piccolo,

no other woods

 or brass to last

into your retreat.

I have my throat

 and my view

and where you grow

 in the sky

your shape

 my heed creates.

Yet how much

 sound can the sky

condense?

Before all my silence

comes back,

my months of noise

osculate,

quiver over

 the mouthpiece,

the slow air chamber,

 and when it’s breathed,

finds its way to you

a hermit

 thrush reciting

all its life

has learned

  

while  you begin

to return

and I breathe

 my way into you

eyeless, handless

pure, first (and last)

breath.