Daily Poems

For the last few weeks, I've been trying to do what I did in college for a quarter: write a poem a day. Of course, maybe only one of out five poems are actually worth reading. But they all have been worth writing. So, I think I may post my favorite poem of the week, once a week. Here goes.

Carpe poem.


----

Recital

At night, if I can hear past 

the static of traffic, the vehicular whooshes, 

I can perceive the leaves warming up wood-

wind wayward warbles, susurrus fast,

now slow and low beneath the tender twine tunings

of maple, apple, pine. 

They are rehearsing for the morning concert,

performing ordinances set before time, when time

signatures held their authorial sway and way, 

way before it was called night and day. 

There was a Voice in the seasons

that sung into motion stallion clouds, clung

dew to trifoliate clover, flung the constellation

into sky-sea, rippling melodies from rain-drops

that have fallen on my thinning hair, clods of hair

pointing out my anointing.

In these songs sung without tongue,

but hummed in heart, what part 

will I harmonize with, with what end

shall I start as though I had never started,

never ended, never parted?

So at night, as I distinguish these sounds, 

distilling them into coherence, hearing

the mild breathing and stirring of the woman

you have given me, herself warming up for her

tomorrow, the silence before the silences, 

perhaps this night, my heart has had its last rehearsal.