Cannot Help

Cannot Help

We cannot help missing the whispers; morning’s hand nudging us awake.
We cannot help listening to inherited tunes within our four walls,
a splat of wood and mud manufactured for one generation or two.

Faint chirps reach us, dim beams speak but everyday incandescence
masks the call of the sun awake; the day has offered the next chance

To hear the lyrics correctly again, to begin from measure one, verse one,
without thinking at all.

I can tap my feet, clap my hands, nod my head, sway and play the way
memory fades from organic paints to steel gray. In wooden repetition
my rhythm mimics perfection yet betrays my affection for the tempo
I’ve played. I hit the notes and lost the nuance.

We are too much adults with our baskets filled with facts, coached to
promote the thin sliver of opinion. We are too much children removed
too soonfrom muddy banks rain-slick that tug us beyond the safe range of hearing.

We are concrete mud, dried and rigid from drought,
We are flood and mud, overfilled and deposited, truth or doubt.

We are players, by the rules; we are singers, pitched safely;
we are writer, word-perfect; we are speakers, rote certain.

And I? I have not played in the river in years; have not dived between
half-notes in far too long. All my fantasies are clearly labeled, the characters
a perfect one-to-one correspondence lest there be any question of my
orthodoxy.

What if, just one day, I spun a tale, knowing not where it would take me,
and became lost in the woods of another land where planets are sentient,
people non-existent and
popcorn is perfectly paired with chocolate wine?