NOTE AND WORD

Notes did more than ride on rhythm

Pulsing through the unity that was the song, is the song

Uniting string, amp, voice, and ear

Hearing players sound together song

Dionysus dance energy and harmony

ALL HARMONIOUS

 

What text can never do, even if spoken

Written reference to literature speech and word

But there is the I AM

Logos

Being in existence and the regression into terms

Name and it’s gone

 

The harmonies that played together knit

Player, hearer, heart, and feet tapping

Nodding, dance, night-time, night-club

Night after night and us three

All harmonious over time

And a long time

 

Life vicissitudes over much time

The song sung together, composed of us three

Now and echo

To talk about together

SEMBLANCE OF COMMUNITY

We regulars are at the Blues Club again, late

We have nothing at home to keep us there

Sometimes alone with just the TV doesn’t cut it

Get away from my head, worries, anxieties

Here we have the semblance of community

We know each other, see each other,

Night upon night, care about each other

We do not see one another outside the Blues Club

With its semblance of community

Some dance by themselves, groove on the tunes, talk between sets

Dodging the desperate drunks

Accosting you down into their abyss

To but be with faces I know

The semblance of community

THE TREASURE OF MY HEART

I bought a t-shirt when I visited Stonehenge

A carved Mayan god of volcanic rock at Chichen Itza

On the Parthenon mount, a ceramic replica of a Grecian urn

A cross in Notre Dame Cathedral

At the Parliament of the World’s Religions, a golden Amitabha

And at a second Parliament, Buddhist prayer beads

 

I was blessed, as are many, with an inheritance gift

For some, it would mean a new car

Others, a big house

Still others, a resort on the Riviera

For me, it was Stonehenge, Notre Dame, and the Parthenon

(Chichen Itza and the Parliaments were largely on my own dime)

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be”

My treasure was, indeed, spent at the promptings of my heart

 

I wanted to listen for ancient mystic Celts

Touch the stars the Mayans recorded

Walk where Socrates, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Themistocles, Pericles, and the peripatetics perambulated

Breathe in the Spirit of Christian beauty

Hear Indigenous teachings, Vedanta, ritual dance, eat at a Sikh Langar, commune with fellow pilgrims

And did, the expense paying its dividends where neither rust nor moth can corrupt

Moments that Make Us Who We Are

I remember that electric slow dance
As I do our trips together
Moments I remember that make us who we are:
Your anger when I left you while I explored Chichen-Itza
The mystic glowing lake we paddled on together that Puerto Rico night
All those airplanes landing in the midnight sky over Miami as we drove home from Key West
Looking up at the base and down from the cliff at Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump
Family, and the luxury resort at Saint Lucia
These are moments that make us who we are
Family dinners on holidays
My growing intelligence as I talk with you
The splash cymbal in the Blind Faith song our finger punctuates, listening to my iPod on the road
Sunday lunches out after I preach
Talk late at night
These are moments that make us what we are

Saint Lucia (An Epic)

Saint Lucia

(An Epic)

III

Perceptions of a New Nation’s Identity

450 years of being colonized

Only sovereign 39 years

Who is Saint Lucia?

Gruff unsmiling locals

Are they unhappy, resentful?

Left over from imperialist exploitation?

Half-Indigenous, half British

But servant class-servant race

Imposed

Private, very private affection shielded from tourists

Gruff, but with breaks of personality, of endearment

Moderate beginning growing familiarity with the Island and the Resort’s locals

After dinner the band played everybody danced smiled

Tourists staff and housekeeping smiles

The resort power outage and on again and off and on during a rainstorm

 

I asked everybody all day where Nick the Rasta Man was

Nick came up to us at lunch

I asked Nick the Rasta Man to make me two bracelets in the same pattern as the chokers I bought

Later, bringing them, Nick sat at our table and talked with us for a while

 

All grows on me as the Island-a wild Island-begins to grow on me

Where will Saint Lucia be in 10 years?