Saw my friend and poet, James Nave, on Friday and he “channeled” this poem right on the spot from a necklace I was wearing, a treasure I picked up in a flea market in Rome.
Tears do not know their names. They fall because they must.
Dreams swallow air, become mist, then vapor, then swamp.
Inside all of this, angles tumble like dominos, add nothing
to everything. Why can’t you march around in a circle forever?
Possible? Impossible?
True? Untrue?
Forced? Released?
Dreams are desires wrapped up in bundles of cotton.
I wipe the field clean; brown earth spreads to the horizon.
These are the days when the sun knows my skin and my skin is wet
and oily, back bare to the air that breathes 24 hours a day.
It is, after all a circle. My tears do not know their names.
The angles stand up again. The dominos are right.
The ivory keys play long night songs. It’s blues time along
the Mississippi. We’re going to walk that river hand in hand.
When we say Amen, somebody will say Amen back.
And the river takes us to the sea.
