Pablo Neruda you speak in transparencies
your favorite shade is made by parts of the body

The song of your family collects in my mind
like the old things that come in a inherited house

After many years I will bring them down from the attic
placing them out and learning to love them as my own

Yehuda Amachi you take horsehair bows and strike down
through the grit of ages till it sings sweetness once again

I feel you move my thoughts into stone hedge positions
allowing knowledge-light to shine in and the earth works as a whole

You engender a wiser kind of poet in me
showing the same fist I make in anger is also a palm welcoming with outstretched fingers

Your words beat at life like a rug against a porch distilling human dust into new directions
causing the grace of our mothers an the ethics of our fathers to up rise into the air
and the ways of both of them
loving and waring all together
into our lungs

04/21/2005

Posted on 04/21/2005
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