The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Michael C. Davis

SERENATA

              —All nature is a commune of offering and taking, compassion and sacrifice. 

Gary Snyder, 11/9/95

Play

for me

as if youth was long, this night

forever, death distant,

and the guttering flame

beyond fluttering to nothing,

a moth’s wing.

Cradle

the guitar

and touch its neck, belly,

for a note robust and pure

to face darkness without flinching.

Play as if the small

bones that make your hands

were spirited away

and only the tune

remained to speak

of what fine things they once were.

One day

cataclysm will come.

The angels will open their phials

and crack the graves

and there I will lie stripped—

skull askew, the bones

of  my spine, girdle, and legs

resounding in the eye

like a fork to tune the air.

Until then,

each note departs

the wood’s polished curve

and makes its way against

the darkness for at least

a while before it dies.

The blood loops through the fingers

for another turn.  The earth

listens, still.