One Song

"One Song"

(“No matter where I am, your teachings fill me with songs.” Psalm 118:54)

Advice weaves in and out of consciousness, word and words
looping like barn swallows, swooping upon the pages we would
write our next memoir. The syllables from well meaning acquaintances,
the sentences from lastly friends, are all meant to ease the layers
of questions tangled about our legs, blankets in midsleep.

I would rest longer, or next time fight through the pain,
I need more fellowship, friends around my grimace,
I should take time off, work longer, seek solitude,
find new voices to tell me how to find the final fork
before I see home from the last lonely hill.

With every meeting I miss I kiss peace goodbye
because I know I should have attended, and those attending
know it better than I.

With every day I put my words into the blender
adding hints and spices hopefully hidden in the puree,
I wish I would come up with just one original recipe,
or at least ingredients in a different order from the cookbooks’
command.

One song has remained the same, I recognize it when I can
hear nothing else. It is like the birds before dawn who know
spring is awake well before snow has receded. It is the newborn
whose cries create smiles, the lullaby sung by a toddler to her doll,
or the kitten whining for her brother-dog let outside without her.

I would let past-tense go if I knew present-tense would pay the bills.
I cannot guarantee applause or tears; the song never plays the same way twice.
I can hear it just around the riverbend, but today I can get no closer than
the whispers heard between the words in my suggestion box; or above

The lull that comes between easterly blusters.