In Loving Memory of: Coming Home

I tell her I have never been lower more needy never less homesick or farther south of my own hemisphere she put me on my back that quick vapor of dairy farms at my lips I breathe in like the student of the universe I am becoming / I start to go under / it is pure voodoo / I see her philtrum groove and a violet Pomo shell around her neck I say turn on some music she says shh there’s something wet she says never mind that / feed pastures swathing vineyards and dull dry hills of my childhood reorganize themselves around me at first all I can hear are machines as rhythmic as a weed whacker and in conformity with a leaf blower like a viola and violin I thought / I think I started to say that out loud she said shut up and waved more cow cud in my face I go down deeper trusting the low brassy pastoral moan like a totem guide / click beetle and mole cricket are in agreement with each other it makes a kind of percussion that compliments the adagio of crow and swallow I am mostly blind and dumb by now but I can run my hands over the hemispherical arch of childhood far below and the woodwind sonata of grosbeak and chickadee above with other fast moving / winged / unpronounceable alphabets I think she sits far inside me at this point with her abracadabra devilry I don’t even bother asking where I am it is a brand new sky and white grass lay flat in memory of deer / all four movements descend and only katydids remain those final vocalists in green aventurescence / chaparral broom on a breeze / a triumphant shh / oh home you’re a woman you’re inside now

St. Martin Landscape, Ellsworth Kelley 1979