for Emma Garver
The mumbles of the old mortar:
It’s found its voice in the wind caught
through the age-compressed cracks
and the holes worn in by flying things.
Dead leaves scrape the serrated stones,
shadowless this near to the morning stars.
The threads of the chain-link fence,
each wire live, each crossing a satellite,
each line of sight tied to the stratosphere.
Farther down the alley, whatever makes the music
is doing a farewell tour of the puddles.
Every dropped note becomes a mother to mud.
A million media machines are playing
the same performer singing the same song:
He wants something only I can give him.
It heaves in the gravel beneath my feet
with a million other voices magnified,
the constant of a million million needs.
It gets through to those it needs to,
to those able and willing to hear.
All the messages at the end of all needing
are clear, and all only say one thing.
But there’s still applause in the withered twigs.
Something that once crawled to drink at this puddle
has taken wing, has stayed on key.
A leaf breaks open in one swift slam.
The many resolve back to one in the aftermath.
I take some gravel in my hand, shake it just so;
There must be a music somewhere
with which it is keeping time.
Every voice takes a shape in the solid and the near.
Each one in all these places could be saying anything.
I become the world by listening.
January 2010