In
that mountain air,
did
you know – perhaps you did –
the
other day, I lipped
a
tune at least as sweet
as
any yet we’ve managed
to
summon from Egil’s cabin
–
this the imaginative
convenience
– on Lake Mind.
Oysters,
finer than words
and
finer than a Celtic fiddle
could
ever phrase the thing.
Fish
there, and the dolphins who
pursue
them, freer than a rosin-
rich
sweep across that neck
you
made. Lacking such freedom,
I
took out a hum in six-eight,
walking
it in, though Melbourne
was
an oven, ablaze with lazy
Latesummer,
stepping it hard:
left-two
right-four left-six
right-two
left-four right-six —
the
rhythm alone bringing
each
thought home together
and
home at long last.
The
rest of that day, an out-
of-tune
cheapie, a plastic descant,
was
away from my side not once,
but
rang each change of seat,
of
posture, of concentration.
Between
times, your trouvere
simply
hummed through his day-
job,
surfing the directions of others.
And
so, old friend, fellow-
at-heart,
this tune it seemed
full
of your hard-won grace,
of
chords you’ve touched and the sweep
of
your timbers, of lakes you’ve
swum
and of paths your boots
have
thumped. It is, old friend,
it
is surely named for you.
Its
clue – praise be – is one that’s
lived
on since much less listened-
to
days, a form, a phrase,
a
verse that stayed afloat
when
eyes were shunning water.
Now
we’re ready to learn,
it
relates a thesis of pain
and
poetry: On the Soul.
Like
most of them, as the world
grows
old, it got forgotten,
then
recalled with swelling pride,
then
lost again, and found
like
any true friend – tune-
companion
– not usually available
at
call – though often so –
but
coming and going at whiles.
I
know it’s aright out there, though
fog
hugs the swell now – a fjord-
life
friend. It’s there for all
the
jiggers and reelers to row
themselves
out to, for crooners
superficially
to allude to,
and
for old-time students of ways
diverse
to listen to. True!
