Fill My Heart with Song

 Fill My Heart with Song

(“I tell all of you with certainty, not even in Israel have I found this kind of faith!” Matthew 8:10b)

Fill my heart with song, teach me lyrics from
beyond the border/land. We will walk together,
we will bask in the sun, we will not notice if you are
immigrant or native son.

Teach me your language, let me hear the slides
and staccatos. Teach me your colloquialisms,
colloquy around the campfire as the waves come
crashing in.

Gale force winds/sing louder.
Sea gulls ascend/sing sweeter.
Sea lions play/sing abandoned.
Feet on the sand/sing magnetic.
Head in the clouds/sing ecstatic.

I would fill my pail with the horizontal rain,
I would circle each raindrop with a permanent marker.
I would paste it on the cliffs as an installation of hope.
I would surrender deeper, find the glint or confetti
and trade it for silly talk and sweaty debates until
their value increases. Did I mention the languages
that wrap the globe in miracles and melody?

Let my mind never be filled, let it always have room for
low-rent districts and the dialects that have been forgotten.
If you are the last speaker, I will walk with you hours
a day
just to learn to say
how loved you are, how your cadence shifted
my metrics decades ago.