This was the night police chased the musicians from the roof.
Yes, the building was abandoned, waiting for the steel ball
to swing from a chain and smash walls.
But the old women across the street couldn’t sleep.
This was the night someone hid a mandolin in a garbage can,
just below a filthy sweater, as if they expected someone
to lift the lid and look. This was the night
the pay phone on the corner continued to ring.
The night the sky reminaed dark longer than it had a right to.
And the dust that would rise into that sky, just waiting.

So my body went on growing, by night,
went on pleading & singing to the earth
I was born to be woven back into Love,
let me see if I can’t sink my roots
deeper into you, your minerals & water,
your leaf rot & gold, your telling & un-
telling of the oldest tales inscribed
on wind-carved rocks, silt & grass,
your songs & prayers, your oaths & myths,
your nights & days in one unending lament,
your luminous swarm of wet kisses
& stings, your spleen & mind,
yur outrageous forgetting & remembrance,
your ghosts & rebirths, your thunderstones
& mushrooms, & your kind loss of memory.