Let the First Lay Be Only Shouting

That wet, muddy teen-age spring

she was the hard,

exquisite voice of Michigan,

the ecstatic song of farmland and woods.

In the beech-maple forest of our youth,

she sang a chance,

take a chan-chan-

chance on me.

And all the living things

swam in that muddled air,

bathed in that sharp

spring-melt wind.

I made a mistake.

I was confused, lost count.

Before I could tally right

and wrong, she gave me all

the drowned loam of those fields

tilled by the moon's deep plow.

That was a long time ago.

We were two

strivings in a savage land—

Ronald-Regan-America—

teased by ignorance and lust,

breathing illegitimate dust.

Tonight, I clutch her

vanishing shadow, cling to her

fading words.

And the tighter I hold her tired song,

the more I remember how we played

knuckle-bones with the bleached

vertebrae of long-dead rabbits.

Amusing, though, that at the last

indention—despite sharp-eyed

proofreaders and crows—

those naked apple trees

still cast shadows on the marble of my hand.

Tonight, all the fragile chronology of time

collapses at my feet. The river tops its banks.

Earth is a temple and mysteries

take place again.

Who could merge us

for one purpose, we two

enemies of the heart?

Burn all the books,

make bonfires and dance in that clean,

dark-art light.

And still I say

the mistress of my tiny empires

loved me madly.

Tonight, the moon hangs low,

marbled by gnarled branches.

And still I say my shy one—

whom I met on that no-name dirt

road in Muskegon County, Michigan—

forever, ever,

I am yours alone.