SINGING A THOUSAND BONES

I read poetry that I may announce to a free-fallen world inanities masquerading as profound such as ‘I want to sing a thousand bones’, I read poetry to swiftly risk knowing another’s aliveness and their pluck perched like the mama mourning dove on front porch’s high corner feathering her 3 babies into this formidable world, I read poetry to laugh at Lady Luck, chuckle with her also, to sing unbuckled when muffled mute, to turn away and towards that I cannot bear to feel or to know, I read poetry for a secret thrill of seeing through a bricked corner where others dare not step nor really look, I read poetry to drink cold beer in that blues club dark and blurred with smoke, my whole life long praising Chicago’s south side rhythm like the derelict brilliant heaven it truly is, yes I read poetry to remember and to forget while light sifts trembling downwards and darkness shouts its foreign tongues both having their wild way with us, those found, those lost, these hordes here in-between forgiven in their unforgivenness. Yes, I read poetry so that I might write slivers of silver smack in midst of pages so blank they weep and in this strange wandering of woven word, this sensing of mind and heart and bone overcome all illusion of us and them that lurks in the numbing muck and murk of ordinary fright. And what’s best, averting that scoundrel haste, I read poetry to baste to bathe in the infinity of taste where singing a thousand bones spirals us closer home inside a tongue signaling shimmers of extraordinary delights.