Breathe Hard, Sing Deep, and Bring It on Home

–for Ray LaMontagne

When he hears Stephen Stills for the first time,he drops a shoe onto the conveyer belt, puts on

his frayed top hat, runs out of the windowlessfactory, to ride his ten-speed home.

He begins to sing, molten voice explodingfrom his diaphragm. All those years of growing up

in Utah, dragged through landlocked statesby a mother who treated him like a million bricks

sewn into the hem of her dress, all those yearsof sun-kissed women he lay beside, all those years

of being the boy you never noticed, did he notbreak your heart, all those years now rumble

up from his throat at the kitchen table. Years laterhe’s onstage in dark theatres that grow bright

with the lighters of an ever-swelling audience.Inside all of us, light wants to flood out,

but we’re afraid those beams might wash outthe world, so instead we wave our tiny torches.

Or is it just me, Ray, when I hear your voice,and realize all those didn’t deserve its should be burnt

to ash. How I must fan those flames of love, so smokechurns from my throat’s chimney. I look to you

on black nights, no longer a constellation,but your own star. How I love words without music.

Like music, these words won’t stay unlesssomeone listens, and I’ll be lucky if mine outlive me.

So, Ray, I’ll sing through concrete walls of every job,into brassy strains of light, through the sweaty,

soggy night. I’ll breathe hard and sing deep in wordswithout melody that search for a home. And when I find it,

I’ll plant my feet and bags on the ground,in that life, and what little music I make of it.