Draft version of "A Very Private Song"

Like one of the newly resurrected, I am... 

I awake slowly in the dark, 

After midnight, but far yet from first light, 

A band of sleep wrapped tight across my forehead: 

Like justice wearing her blind, I am... 

I arise and walk, I am all feet, 

As I pass through rooms without walls, 

No walls at all, no sorrow, no joy, 

Until I hover over the bathroom sink, still mostly ghost. 

By the nightlight's glow 

I could see my face in the mirror — I do not look, I listen 

I listen to the murmur of aging pipes, 

the drip drop of the kitchen clock, 

filling buckets of time, 

and the soft slow alto notes 

of the Santa Fe crossing Grand. 

Well, God, look at this, 

My son's Catholic shirt soaking in bleach, 

Just where I left it and forgot. 

I pull a silver chain 

And with a small hiccup the sink drains, 

Now I am my hands, 

My fingers remembering this fabric, 

As if it were my own skin, flesh of my flesh. 

What does he do? 

What does he do, I wonder, 

As I hold the shirt before me. 

I take my nail brush and I scrub, 

Whist, whist, a paste of soap, 

Then rinse. 

I fold the shirt, and fold the shirt, 

And squeeze — this way there are no wrinkles, 

No sorrow, no joy, 

And then I know, 

Nothing is ever this certain in day light, 

Nothing at all. 

We talked about Wrigley Field and Vietnam: 

Three years in country he'd rather forget, 

And how the same Company that sprayed him 

with Agent Orange 

Made the plastic plate in his knee, 

But Wrigley Field was fine, 

The finest place he'd ever seen. 

The Cubs never won, he said, 

But nobody ever cared, 

In the bleachers the home team was always cheered.

The only stadium left in the country 

That still changes the score by hand,

Did I know that? 

God is recalling all sparrows 

born between May 5, 1988 and June 2, 1989. 

If you believe you have one 

of these defective birds, write: 

   Fallen Sparrow 

   Simon Peter 

   Pearly Gates 

   Paradise. 

Also, all humans born with 

existentialist soul models between 

000001 and 000001.1  should 

contact their local Philosophy 

Dealer concerning the Sartre 

Rebate Days offer by 

November 1, 1989.  Rebates will 

not be honored after that 

date.  C'est la vie. 

The computers are sleeping

Like cows on a summer night

Dreaming of numbers as varied

As blades of grass.

Milk pours out from organs of

Wire and magnetic tape

Each day but

Now they slumber

As I alone move through

The darkness

As the moon on a summer night.

     Western culture has held the Trinity to be a symbol of perfection.

Jung saw perfection as masculine, and proposed that the corresponding 

feminine principle was completion.   

This meant that for all its perfection, the Trinity was incomplete.  

The true symbol of consciousness is the Quaternity, with the missing fourth 

being Sophie, the goddess of Wisdom. 

Consider this, 

Bermuda grass, cat's claw, bougainvillea, 

A lizard, a primrose monarch, 

An emerald hummingbird, 

A paper dauber's nest under the eaves, 

Abandoned, 

An old cat sits 

taking the measure of things, 

Render to this day its due, says the cat, 

And the neighbor's dog agreeably barks, 

Yep, yep, yep!

Consider these, 

The thousand little things, 

The hum of diptera over crumbs, 

The dance of sun and shadows, 

The sky and the dust, 

The gathering clouds, 

The susurrant murmur of doves,  

Rumors of rain from the south, 

The sumac leaves whisper tsk, tsk, 

And you? 

This is what the day has provided you, 

Return it in good measure: 

The wind that brings the dust 

The wind that brings the rain 

From the fiery sun 

To a grain of sand 

The biggest to the smallest 

Is all in your hand 

The droning, the chirping, the humming. 

Peter,

No one else knows you 

Like I do, 

And no one else sees 

The gentle eyes, 

The graceful hands, 

The lover's look, 

That I see,

  My baby, my joy 

  Just want you to know 

  That I love you.

               K.C.