Another revision

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION 

AS A SEASCAPE WITH VESSEL

(for Cesaria Evora)

“She sang beyond the genius of the sea.”

 

I love how

what impresses

more than your swollen footprints

in the Saõ Vicente sand

is your ghost verses

appearing to ignite

a light from the tallest mast

and how your voice

rising or falling, becomes

a salty island breeze swirling

around the man-made reef 

of rusted hull which 

resembles my dreams.

Your genius—half mountain mist,

half cliff of crashing wave—

is somehow a migrating sun.

Cesaria, is that why 

the aria in your name

carries the whistle of 

those like me who—

with a star’s glint 

in one eye and a squint 

in the other—

track speckled fins 

of whale song?

Since even gliding gulls

fear a plunge,

I also often fear 

tumbling down

your ballad’s seaside cliff

as you measure

your sodade. She left me

only this record—

how do I balance 

on my head

the simple truth 

of how often the sea 

and the song of salt are

in the same skeleton 

key—which darkens

and enlightens

what one finds

inside your every word

by driftwood

word?

 

Cizé, I miss 

how the brown 

liquor of your voice

—dark voice of the sea—

now bottled 

on heaven’s higher shelf 

carried more Marlboro blaze 

than Coast Guard’s 

finger of searchlight.

Perhaps the barnacled hull

of my skull will never 

comprehend how

your contralto illuminated 

our dunes with so many waves 

of lunar light.

A constant cry

of yours—though

I don’t understand

its Kriolu signs—

becomes a medley

of whale spout

rising in Atlantic moonlight.

She left me 

only this record—

a mirror of my flaring vices

flaming as the sea

under your solar voice?

Since falling tears also 

reflect celestial shine, 

are the traces I still taste

drops of your faith 

on the cheeks of Sodade?

Tonight I watch 

Mindelo don

her ebony negligee 

and knot a sequined

scarf of stars 

around her head 

before mulling

in her Atlantic mirror 

what tariff of tide

you must’ve paid

for slipping

off your shoes

to pace a place

I still aim to go—

where the sea

of your song

rises beyond

every word

by barefoot

word.

Old subject—New poem.

THINK OF ONE

What are the reasons heat

rises—not cleanly, but 

as if choosing what to claim first: 

the dry leaves, or the green wood 

which resists browning & blackness

before dancing in a mirror of smoke? 

Like this: I still don’t understand

how the brownness of her eyes 

left me spinning sideways 

and splintering into a flame with 

razor tipped glances which almost

became the means of our unmaking. 

I had thought myself complete, 

a manuscript already illuminated,

bound in the leather of certainty,

my quiver full of notched couplets.

But just before in the dawn light,

she traced a circle in red dust,

& asked me to step inside it.

I did. And the circle began to spiral

a mandala into my chest.

Of course fire quivers differently 

than we do. It can fill the blanks,

no not the blanks, the spaces 

between bodies with light or

a reflection we thought was silence,

which then makes every flame a door. 

Or is door the wrong portal? Perhaps

more like a window through which

we see how a deer, drinking 

at stream’s edge, lifts its brown head

to acknowledge what’s already

in flight—the blink before

transformation, gash and gift

indistinguishable. Even now,

I am not sure who was the archer 

or the deer, if the point came to me 

or through me, if she was the singing

bowstring or I was the arrow

grateful at last to have found

something else that hummed  

like a purpose: to vibrate enough 

that someone, somewhere, might 

have had a chance to bathe even

their wounds in the splashes of light.