cutting into vision for languages...

photo by EJR ©

the Hudson as theater in the round wrecks of the edmund fitzgerald

cupping and crawling

conquests and surrenders

we are rooted cores

soul within fingers

we are what teaches us

right now

we are in an inland sea mythology

we are forested memory and just

hand-billed to do what we do

life being passed around

pretzels up and down

a bar-top

these are drinking towns

swapping stories

what once was

another pour, wait

i have a cage story to tell

if you ring that bell

affixed to the corner

wearing hung glasses

racked as hair over there

we are the chorus

Horus and Dionysus

we bless the theater

we are regulars

we huddle and murmur

we know how drunk

you need be

rung inside something

until words

gesticulate meant

a bent dizzy

regularity repeated

by washing in the quiet

buildings of storms

we are the serenade

the hypnosis

the symphony and

the oscillations

we are silent velvets attached

to the bottoms of standing still

so as not to scratch by dancing

the floors covered in scattered

sand and sawmill shavings

we played shuffleboard

bump and hug

waiting for last call

the alley door opened

and it was raining

the wind cutting into 4 am

timing a timelessness

the rest of us

can play catch

as catch can with

we bowled

valley thunder rolled

we wobbled

drawn well light

we wondered

lightning as care

we wandered

giving in to thirst

we were

slaying every hunger

to be someone’s discovery

summer is here now

blessing Moon filling

her sirens and fleshed towns

this deep old tongued valley

a ripe shale clay slid

viscous bouquet we did

linger here

where her scent was

vicious and simple

i maple

impale barren skies

wanting, is my domain

needing is my bane

remember, we are part

and parcel spoken rituals

silent record keeping

hushed whispered paraded whorled

we are the woods and siding

the stone walls where

there were trees once

we became what the fields gave us

as we tilled season after season

with the only reason we grind on

was to find being dug into

the skin, bone and sinew

of main characterizations

our demons and angels

fleshed with awe again

why we started this story

by crying to end

the night as tide

and tit to rain

EJR ©