Wednesday, January 2, 2008

please turn on the light.

Whistling at the window is a small bird.
Would you like to travel to the wide fields? chirps he
in his small song, till I say I
think I'd like to run across those far fields.
Quickly, find your feet, then, and be coming!
Chirrup chirrah chirree,
follow me, twitters he.

I saw you on the sidewalk, and we stopped to ask the way.
Those seas of green we cannot find: we ask you
where to go, if you know.

If you incline your tall ears over here,
you reply,
and throw a coin or two towards my feet,
so you say,
I'll fill those ears with songs and tales
to lead you on the road; the rhythms are
the way to what you seek.

We spin into the dance, twirling
once, twice,
and again—
here we are where we began.

And so with flit of wing and pound of foot
we go on,
with a particular aversion for the sing-song.
We attribute our aversion to your sing-song.

If you take a box of pencils
you must write us something new:
we are searching for the new!
When you stumble on a story
you are plucking on the strings,
saying,
Ho, hum,
sing along.
Heard it all before.

We are caught in restless dreams:
swim through land,
walk on sea,
searching for the missing thing, and

stop just for a moment! See,
though we sleep we are not still, and
when we wake we cannot move.
Look again. There is something left.
Surely there is something left.
Lying by the pavement, we are
waiting; watching
the direction that it might have gone,
when it fled.
Maybe it will come again.

Sitting by my bedside, now, I see
something there, in the dark, and I
listen to the silence till our breathing,
like my blanket, covers me. I open
up my wide mouth and I sing a song or two
(just the same I sang to you,
yesterday);
then I lift my voice in stories of the great
far and wide, till the frenzy and the wonder
almost send my soul to sleep.
Put a stamp on quickly. The address is to my dreams.

But the shadow over yonder takes my story
to the shelf and leaves it there. It takes its own
and starts to read, here and now, over me.
Threads of green rush over me,
glistening like the wind.
Maybe I will listen to a word or two;
probably I'll close my eyes.
Would you like to listen, if I
take you there?
Maybe it will put to bed your tired feet.

Maybe it is time to sleep.