Riding In the Back of a Truck with Willie Nelson
He’s not loud at first, just hums
a bit, then a few words
with that voice of his, only
one like it, hummingbirds
fluttering in every note,
and I point to his voice box,
and he smiles and winks so I know
it’s okay for me to touch
it and I can feel the vibrations, or
maybe it’s oscillations, and I think
of math, how someone told me
that God created the universe
with math and that’s what music
is, pure math, that’s what’s in Willie
and his voice box, so I say,
“Oscillate, baby, oscillate,”
and don’t you know it, he does
and then Willie, and this is
why we love him, ‘cause he’s
all of us, sings louder
and his voice doubles
and there are more people
suddenly in the back of the truck
and we’re all singing,
we’re all vibrating, the whole
truck’s oscillating and, because
this is a dream, this is the dream,
we sing until we lift right on up
off the road.
Inside My Wild Heart
Inside my wild heart
lives a song unable
to unsing itself—I
can’t bear to name it—
and it sings in a harmony
split, not broken, holding
two opposites entwined,
like DNA strands linked,
one strand unrelenting
in its joy, in its raw light,
while the dark strand
demands to be named
a midnight grief, yet
both seamlessly braided
together within me
and all over me, too,
shimmer and shadow
humming alive
on my skin.
I Walk Through the Field
I walk through the field
of memory, past the barn
where my father is whole
again and I stop by the fence
to watch my horse, she is
every horse I've ever known,
and I am pulled into the deep
of her until her tail starts
to conduct a symphony
she’s so happy to see me
and I know her mystery hums
in my bones, but I leave her
to walk down the hill where,
because it's November, the frost
has pewtered the ground
beneath me to the point
where every step I make
splinters the grass that
in the light becomes
a million intricate ice caves
until I reach the familiar
imprints my knees leave
by the pond, where I go
to ask for forgiveness,
to curse, to beg to be
the one who still believes
when the mist that is neither
light nor dark, but is the color
of the ash upon my forehead,
hovers above the water
until it suddenly swirls,
like the tornado that tore
down our neighbor’s house,
and just as quickly as it sped
up it slows down, caressing
the top of the pond.
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