The tools of music: this is where it first
emerged from noise and how it
stays in touch with clutter
and how it gets back to the heart –
that single-stroke kachunker with its grab, give,
grab. He is bringing the kitchen,
the workshop, screwing wingnuts and attaching
brackets, placing the pedals like accelerators,
setting up the stands for snare and high hat like decapitated
wading birds. How music will make itself walk
into the terrible stunned air behind the shed
where all the objects looked away. Now the hollow bodies,
their blank moons tilted just asking for it, and back and
back to the time you missed the step
and dropped the baby and your heart leapt out
to catch it, for all those accidents that might have
and that happened he floats the ride and then
suspends the crash above the wreckage like its flat
burnished bell.
Unsheathes the brushes that can shuffle through the grass
or pitter like small rain. All this hardware to recall
the mess you left back home
and bring it to the music
and get back to the heart.
He sits on the stool
in the middle of your life
and waits to feel the beat. To speak it
and keep it. Here we go.