After-Music

Open

20 o P e n The open soul / is a lost soul . . . —Dabney Stuart Desultory air curls in, twists on a pliant stem, moves on to nudge the curtain and the late begonias on the dresser. The soul itself at season’s end, petals, phrases spoken somewhere— or unspoken—touched by that circling wind. Leaves folded back like hands—giving or asking? stem cut, raked to the heap, some pollen flies even now—even in these autumn tailings. 21 Petals, no point in closing, around what? The careless equinox has taken it, song with a short shelf-life, a child’s hum or mine. all lost in the fall: scent, seed, the fine yellow dust of spores, scattered down the unmarked trails of the air. open. Hopeless and open. q not like a book. or the top of the red car where a woman, waiting, rests one hand on the wheel. not an open hearing, open house, open heart. open, instead, like arizona where the mountains shrugged, turned north, and let the flat land draw its own conclusions. q soul hides in the colored canyons of the brain—or valves, veins, some hermitage 22 of flutes and fibers. set free, won’t it ease out, breathe, drift in eddies of the lean air? it looks back, dreams back. Through leaf-broken light it almost recognizes gestures, slants and sidesteps, handshakes, my shrugs and stares. Too far— can’t make out the limp and longing of companionable flesh. But voice carries even over distances like these, half hoarse, hesitating, doing my best to seem at ease. Listening, does soul recall long sadnesses, taut rope raveling as we pulled through a marsh of years— and, over and under these, the intricate entwinings, meshing life with life? The soul’s not going back, but still it clings, half hankering, until an updraft scatters it. a thread of road twists 2 by the river, and voices blow downwind like smoke. ...