Emissary

In 1977, two space craft were launched from Kennedy Space Center,

each carrying a gilded recording of some of Earth's finest offerings.

Beyond the termination shock, the heliosheath,
a slow glide towards Alpha Centauri . . .

Cryptic lines and circles,
a language manufactured for decipherment:
a singular asterisk of 14 pulsars and a central us,
cityscape wave forms, time in terms of hydrogen,

how to play a record in binary, stylus included—
and then—
a reverse engineered codex of fifty-five hellos,
Brandenberg Concerto #2, crickets,
wild dogs, thunder, an F-111 fly-by,
Johnny B. Goode, footsteps, heartbeat, laughter.

Who will wonder who we were?
Who will hear your darkling groove?

High Lonesome

Music is the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

—Gottfried Leibniz

In this mute tongue,
sound should be ineffable,
harmony confounding
foreign syntax
with such extrinsic artistry;
yet hertz and ratios
in precise oscillations
spread across the page,

graphite and arcane
formulae translating
lead to tenor
in silent symbols,
never knowing
the instinctive
soft dactyl heartbeat tone
we hear in the sum of sines.

Elegant, yes, but awkward,
clumsy when I have done this
a million times a billion times
by heart with no integrand,
no derivatives
with respect to anything
but the frequencies that beat
against my chest.

An integral multiple I could pluck
from the air as soon as breath,
that feral vine twines
around melody,
close tenor,
perfect fifth,
audible now,
transcendent.