An echo of a train hooting Mixes with a guitar, gently Strummed. Memory is like that You know,

The sharp blade of regret And suffering slicing through The chords of all that was good And so is now past.

After a while, a voice starts Up, as if ringing from a phone, Hesitant swimming up from The disturbed waters of silent Years pooled between now And then - present and past.

A ripple is set off somehow – None threw a stone in, No rain is falling down Nor is the air traveling - Beginning at the margins, That soft skin of earlobes, The well in one’s neck, Fingertips, corners of lips.

And so afterwards a man sits Up in bed all night, Clutching the center, His wildly oscillating heart.

(after Rumi) Waking this morning into The first hints of fall, light On the ground and some Salvaged pieces of skull Bone, leaves catching The first flame, wind from Southeast ruffling Buds of yellow chrysanthemums: Light pushing out From wet earth,

My inert body, instead of singing The dreams just seen and just Lost, As it kneels to kiss the ground, A dulcimer cradled in the arms.

Has been rifling through Piles, stacks, heaps Of books, hunting communion That can be found only with Another empty and frightened Body or god.