Unknown Music
We know it waits there in the cradle
of the sky. Waits amid the scars of clouds
with their thickets of white. My mother
spoke often of the kingdom, as though
it were possible to trace the path of birds
into a tapestry. There is a language of dark
and a language of light, and neither
knows the other until they are the same.
The first song, I think, was death,
and it brushed against our legs in the tall
grass, and we named it for the gates
that kept opening and closing in our dreams,
named it for the dust-colored passage
of the years. Even decades dissolve
on the tongue. My mother told me once
that stars were fireflies that blinked on
and off so slowly we never noticed,
told me that my father was the day’s
last light the sun cast on a river’s surface.
Doug Ramspeck is the author of nine poetry collections, two collections of short stories, and a novella. Individual poems have appeared in journals that include The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Slate, and The Georgia Review.
Header photo by Vladimir Melnikov, courtesy Shutterstock.
