tribute

Of a Particular Piece of North American Music

(Ashokan Farewell, Jay Ungar, 1982)

Its first utterances stir me,

open, display, flatten me,

as if I were a ship’s mast.

Then the others

begin their phrasing, accompaniment,

expanding the single voice

into a conversation.

It’s as if a beating heart

found lungs, blood,

and I am a rocky bluff,

a green field strewn with stone,

a wooden fence along a dirt road

graced by a spray of tiny flowers.

Then, the swell of repetition,

the deliberate climb

to the overlook

high on a mountainside,

and my soul is laid bare,

and I am gone

as gone could ever be,

riding the wind.

Solid gone.

C.M. Rivers

Mary, who helps us remember tenderness when we find an insect on our pillow, or a bat in the house.

Mary, who reminds us of a hundred walks in the wilderness, even as we stare at lamp-lit sheetrock and worry about work.

Mary, who tells us what we knew the moment we were born but have forgotten.

Mary, who makes us feel less alone beneath the ripening grapefruit moon.

Mary, honor student of botany, biology, ornithology.

Mary, whose words are chosen and ordered as if by a kindly saint.

C.M. Rivers