Orfeo

I created more loss where I meant to make less.

Created more debt where I meant to make depth.

Created more death. Mind is

the subject of the mind, but the poem becomes a

flower or a tree. Ask the wind. Ask

the wind that wrote this poem. Cirrus scarf

blowing through the endless blue its song

about a neck, a pulse, the inner gem, that stone.

Ask the wind that curls around the house’s eaves

with a moan. Erotic or—. Forlorn—.

It’s hard to know. It’s hard to know the difference

between Echo & Narcissus. You say the words

you say but you know—. They’ve already been said—.

Your mouth’s diamond mine. Filled with coal.

_____

I tuned the radio to the AM dial call letters YHWH.

A bride drags her veil behind her in the dust

between the olive trees in the orchard, leaving no

footprints but a sinuous line. News

from paradise at the top of the hour. Traffic

updates in spring. & every fall

a test of the emergency broadcast system

that lasts all season long. But it was winter, then.

& the station played Sappho—. Not the words—.

But the silences—. More comforting

than any song—. Because you know the words

& can’t get them wrong—. As you sing—.

As you sing along—.

_____

I heard the music that turned the m upside down

insisting the letter was a w—. stet,

stet in red yelled out the editors in the underworld.

But done with crying by the river, done

with begging the boatman to take me back where

I'd been, I let the wind

do my thinking for me. You

must know the roots of the willow

to bend the branch into a lyre. Or a liar—.

Which you bend yourself into becoming—.

Once you ve cut your roots

& wandered free. "Free." "Free verse."

The universe is deliberate sings the cosmic eros—.

_____

The song is over before it's begun—.

This is one of the things you learn

in your music lessons.

When your teacher is a muse—. Or museum—.

& the myth is a mouth inside your mouth

you don't know how to coax open.

Millet-seed or mustard—. Pollen smeared on a stone—.

Or honey in the honeycomb—.

Bloodless offerings that appease the gods

seldom satisfy the ghosts. Shades

stuttering in the dark cave hoping a tooth will bite

the tongue, or a thorn

prick the thumb. A drop of blood—.

Is that too much to ask—. A little sacrifice—. The letter a.

_____

A life—. The verb to read in the old tongue means "to know

again." An ant crawls across the keyboard

looking for a way in—. Culvert of the letter o

for countless years led to the river in the labyrinthine cave

but leads to another culvert now. Water

so still it's a mirror but look in and you see nothing

it is so dark. You have to ask where are you

to know if you're there. & the shift key that makes the little o

call down a god in pain—. & the space bar

that adds to the unthinkable blank a different agony.

Not a blank face—. But a vibration in the void .

An indefinite article sung out with the force of the solar wind

might bring to you anything you sing of—. A moon—.

A name—. Have you ever looked the letter a in the face—.

_____

No—. Neither have I—. Some light

on some face shines & so the face is seen. Rabbit

in the moon that once a month is once again

your lost wife. Mind

& strife—. & the paring knife—.

Cutting the apple in two & in two again—.

A process you can repeat until the slice is so thin

you see through it. An apple that is an eye—.

An I—. Not knowledge exactly—. Not good,

not bad—. A lens of a kind

that lets you see a thought blow through the mind

as wind blows through a tree. Easy in summer

with leaves full & green. But winter

splays the nerve against the sky—. & the dove

_____

cooing a home in the empty air—. & the cloud

gathering the morning darkly within it—.

Tells you the snow you sang out for so long ago

has come—. Not a blizzard—.

A dusting that turns the willow branch white—.

White as the hem of a wedding dress—.

Hymen carried a sputtering torch across the heavens

praying sleep would arrive. Sleep that knows

no pain—. Sleep that blooms the stone-

cold seed buried in the dumb loam of the sad mind.

The mind is the subject

of the mind. It's cute to think there's an otherwise.

You have to find a word containing "wise"

to find a way to be wise. & then sing it—. Otherwise—