starts with mouth-to-mouth inspiration from the beige-lipped
perfect O of a Martin D-28 guitar
where soul on rebound from plucked brass swims up through sound waves
and waits humming behind a copse of hair at the mouth
of an ear cave for the high lonesome sound another
soul breaks into when it breaks as breath out of its white
ribbed chest cave slips on a jumpsuit of song from the red
walls of the singer’s mouth rides the trilled riptide outwards
and partners its soulmate to sashay down the vaulted
canal career off tautened eardrum toggle hammer
on anvil and tickle the coiled-up cochlea but
the true beginnings of bluegrass echoed through ancient
rock caves whose high roofs hummed duets with stone-age singers
enchanted by warm overtones the icy limestone
draped around their solitary voices longing to
prolong the partnership between what lasts and what runs
out of breath seeking to carry harmony with them
as a body out of the cave finally lighting
on wood carved into a heart shape too full of singing
to taper to a point curved like a woman gravid
with new music soundboard braced by rosewood ribs slim neck
drawing out voice cords like drops of water drawn into
needles wept from cave roofs brimming with human sorrow
yet plucking joy from hearing unhuman wood echo
their song in its own bright voice even on starless nights
as if they had come at the farthest reach of a cave’s
dark passage into a place of green skies and blue grass
This appeared in the September 2011 issue.
