magnum opus

You’re a dust devil my grandma said.

Tangles from the desert-wind.

Wouldn’t let my mother brush my hair.

Was never still.

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Now I’m standing in this storm.

Hair lashing in my eyes.

Still her, or her again.

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The wind playing with my hair.

The wind playing the hair.

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Indecisive air breathing through my clothes.

Splash, gusts, birdcalls. Roar.

Whipping itself into in the scent of my skin.

Bear fat. Balm of Gilead. Brine. Ozone.

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….Last July I bought this balm

….from a man named Pixie who raises bees.

….So hot and dry that my nose would bleed.

….The dust like fog, all over my teeth.

….Cottonwood buds, musk, sweat, blood, clay.

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….An old lady’s property

….had a bear that wouldn’t leave her alone

….so the community hunted him

….and used up every last bit of his body.

….Bear fat. Balm of Gilead. Fear. Love.

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….This July the whole city’s instagramming lightning

….while I’m out here standing in it.

….Wind’s strumming dark into vibrato.

….It has something to sing.

….Brine. Ozone. Splash, gusts, birdcalls.

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I’m learning Spanish.

Te canto. Cantation. cantatio. Incantation.

The song is a spell and the spell is the voice and I am the string.

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….I love to blow across the lips of bottles and hear their deep hum.

….My breath, its voice.

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….I’d run my fingers around the rims of my mother’s crystal (I wasn’t supposed to touch).

….The object, the pitch.

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….English artists built pipes on top of a hill so the bellows of the wind would play them.

….The wind, the breath.

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….In Nepal I stood in a singing bowl so large that the healer wound up to gong.

….The body, the song.

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Dust devil watching the wind break waves on this white capped lake,

Smelling bear fat, balm of gilled, brine, ozone.

Remembering cottonwood buds, musk, sweat, blood, clay,

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Thinking

this is the sky playing the earth

Magnum opus

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#storms #realstorms #stormenergy #wearemadeofsound #everythingiswaves #soundwaves #music #wind #poetry