c. 1985

Reading

The capability of ignoring noise
Finding a center to silence
In the comforts of home
Listening to so many voices one could lose track
The sounds of machines might confuse
Or the mathematics of reason could impose its spell
On an otherwise intransigent will

Points are gradually suspended
Evenly distributed over time
Like words according favor to a speaker
Or harmony foregrounding an area of reference
In song, now that its begun
Waiting for the close
Brings both of us together

To announce a new beginning
A reprise reminds us quickly of a word
Which takes shape only to allow another
Following this path
Alongside a tapering thought
Of an actual occasion
This is your invention

But perhaps I've interfered
Between these fears exists our one connection
Now to be composed of primary apprehension
Though such avowal leads onlly to a net
Of images: yours, to be noted on the staves
Of history: mine, to be equated
With the identity of a dead composer
For the sake of smell
Something is omitted
And the choice is to blur
The edges of voice
To recreate the damp earth
Between the dry lines
Having hesitated, now begin

Hear only the tread of walking
And between each mark a thinking
Preoccupation with a remembered utterance
Becoming quite clear, but garbled
At the conclusion returning
Like a record on a stripped groove
Like a car horn beeping through eternity

Still silence echoes those sounds
To speak is to be reminded of forgetting
To describe is to elicit strict attention
And such specific forms finally demand
A portrait of music or only its enclosures
Dismiss this particular breeze
And eons of Spring gather in the opening