Speak to me gently…
I am listening with my bones,
instruments of hearing
my companions I listen
by the fire.
Speak into my soul
with touch and glance
while I walk to and fro
and spread a feast
that’s fit for angels
to consume and dance
under stars and with
the silky moon.
Bone-music vibrates
from my bone-core deep,
emanates from my sternum,
surrounds me in its sticky grasp
and to its gentle bosom I am clasped…
in drum, in harp
in whistle call
and in that dance
on puffy clouds
in fall.
Hear its cry in
my heart’s every pulse
and I must answer
or I will remain
bereft and longing,
agitated, always
and seeking in snows
and in ocean floors
and in that desert in the forest
and behind every wind that blows.
Finally, I simply rest
sitting in the shifting
sands and singing
over long-dead bones,
my song arising, flying
here and there and hear
the song of mountains
the thrum of reefs
against the waves insistent,
fresh and ancient
in the days,
these days
that I am
Singing to the bones
Read and reread this–the opening stanza alone, sings. So lovely, Charissa.
Omg thanks Mel!
A bit of inside baseball: I was aiming at an irregular somewhat surprising rhyme pattern that the rhythm changes indirectly hint at but never ever quite deliver on schedule…because the Bone Song always twists away from the center to the periphery and there defines that place as center and draws us there…and then dances away again…and so on.
The work of singing bones is never done because from those bones dead and long dry comes the return of life and limbering and then sinews and then…rebirth and bones again encased inside living bone temples…waiting for the next round…
I could hear you reading this one.
Love its pulse!