Rosin the Bow

Sparrows resting like staffed notes on a wire.

Saying what one means might be beyond the scope of existence. We try to word Love, spinning letters into golden seams and silvery stitches. And we fail. Yet, one knows how to wear it; to spin around in it; to cut a piece of it for a ribbon to tie back the wild hair set free by it.

The wind hisses all night, and 3 a.m. is colder than expected. Even in the dark I catch my image rising in the giant mirror recently moved to the dresser. It can't stay. The visual manifestation of the dissonance between what I see and who I am is a disease that putrefies the guts. I dwell in the house of covered mirrors.  

Dickinson's kitchen twine, calling. Her countenance spreads through the vascular ink as if I know her. The cellular response finds delight in the hunger for more. There is one who could teach like the first days, but we both know how that will end. Rivers and cabins and wine-flavored surrender to what-is . . .

Water moves below the surface. Air whisks the ice with momentary eddies of loosened flakes. The Earth rests before spring begins to rosin the bow. Yet fire remains in the mouth-to-mouth – in the touch – in the familiar notes of gingerbread and Chopin and hieroglyphic line breaks in poems hand written in New England gardens and hills.

And in the elemental embrace of landscape and breath, I ask that you hold still, Maestro – the benevolence of the seasons mean to deliver all the right notes soon.