Catching a Snare Drum at the Fraser’s Mouth

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WITH THE EARTH AT MY BACK AND THE SEA BEFORE ME

Ravens circle back when I stand on the sidewalk
of Bridgeport Road and call up to them among the
                  papered windows
and bankrupted PC repair shops,
in a spring flood of SUVs singing out praises to all
                  who have ears,
even if blinded, even if stunned and numb,
even if accustomed to indifference and indifferent
                  to custom.
I sing their praises in praise of song.
Curious, contemplative ravens, with LED eyes
                  and wings
made from folded newspapers, each with one
                  journalist,
lodged comfortably with an ample but not
                  extravagant supply of cheap Scotch whisky
and a dictionary in one splayed flight feather.
I sing their song in songs of praise.
Snare cymbals stroked on the floor of the earth.
Ravens speaking one word: blackness, in every
                  possible iteration,
the brushes caressing the cymbals in a circular
                  soft-shoe,
the shhh-shh cut short by a hand grasping the rim
                  of sound and taking it in to the body.
I dance their thunder in praise of dance.
Oh, not storm, shh-sh, not storm, shh-sh, shhh-shh,
but a back eddy bearing the Pacific over meadows
                  of grizzlies
and log jams of clear-cuts and decommissioned
                  forest access roads
that are the floor of the earth,
touched by the lash of the sea.
Oh, thunder!
This is a jazz quintet at Richard’s on Richards.
Oh, storm!
The clink of glasses. The neon cocktails. The
                  electric tongues.
Oh, torrents in the throat of the river!
The mouth around the body, electrified by X-rays.
Shhh-shh.
The dancers: web designers – with yellow hair
and pink golf shirts and faux leopard skin purses,
staring into the face of a woman,
stepping out, dressed not to conceal, but to reveal
the irradiated image of themselves,
shhh-shh, shhh-sh, and singing
to watch the world vanish in the black notes of a
                  bleak song squeaked
with all the aspirated grace of asphalt and chrome
                  and cigarettes
in Death’s
stubbed out with lacquered fingers,
in Death’s
applauding with the texture of smoke
in Death’s languid caress.

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