Singing, and: Blood Territory, and: Reading

Singing

While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other.

—Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)

As our best selves,                       we might be            those dense old woods,              treesat wordless attention,        feeling            the crying vibrationand echo             of that music.We are Maryland wood: ash, white oak,            hickory andmaybe a stand             of loblolly pine.            The books could tell us our names.It is likely morning, cool and gray.                There            is the distant scentof wood smoke            and pork fat.            The soundof an ax.            It seems                   even the birdshave stopped to listen                                                for the moment,some time back            in the pages of the centurieswhere            there really is            nowhere to go,no more            work to be done.What is the pitch                                                of that joy, the tempoof that sadness?One voice singing from afar,            another             answering closerthese shadows that move slowly among us,            some barefootsome shod            on the leaves            and twigsand ever-listening earth.

Blood Territory

There are songs, and there aregood songs. The path into your blood,your pulse a footfall againsthardening mud. Terror in thatterritory, fear of what's preservedin the woods, along with the cominghustle of shoots, the lasciviousnessof leaves, what's lost alongpower lines, what's crushed on openasphalt. The river rises to its ownsurface, a twisted bit of logic mixedwith tannins and travel. These late-winter branches are dendrites fullof memories, kept secrets of trees.

Reading

Graffiti letters the rusted                                                      steel of these                                    dawn-lit freight boxes, blue bubblescript outlined in white, Almighty,                                    yellow lightning bolted throughblack borders,                                    red and green Afros,                                                                                    text nextto illegible,               just how much                   such words                                                                  suppose, and therea face painted like looking                                                               out,                                                                           slantwise eyes                                                    reading the divideacross the river.