Double Bass
for Bill Harrison
My buddy, a bassist who played shows with Dizzy Gillespie,
now has arthritic fingers that fret at the sight of a fretboard,
though he keeps his old instrument, planed from a maple tree,
in the corner of his office uncovered, an unsheathed sword
still glimmering with power, its roseate hue marred Martian-
canal like, jagged striations the silent music of woodworms
from a century ago. A daily reminder, like performing darshan
in front of an altar, that there is no contradiction in terms
regarding the divine, how a newly blind luthier may come
to love the rasp and socket chisel they no longer can use
more than when they used them; now the once floating thumb
thrums upon a ghost string, proving the end can introduce
sui generis new genesis. La Contrebasse leans there to remind
that the lesson the bass teaches us is how to lead from behind.
The Giraffe
for Kirsten Newell
Do you find me colorful as well?
—Lucie Brock BroidoCome here, my demure,
hoofed ruminant,
you like fingerprints,
don't share the same
coat pattern as any other
creature ever grazing
in all the herds that were
or will be on savannahs
stretching to eternity.Each constellation, unique:
fuzzy-edged, lemony,
cream-shaded, blotched
a smoothened brown,
spaces and interstices a web
of spots known by no name
that can do their lobed,
elliptical shapes justice.Whether camouflaging
neonates—tall as a tall man
when calved—against hyena,
or evolved as a means
to thermoregulate the skin
in intense heat, Darwin
or Lamarck or the Buddha
didn't know. Now we wrap
your print on spandex leggings
and bowling ball bags,
while you munch mimosa,
acacia, wild apricot.Let me stroke the velvety nubs
of your ossicones from behind,
suspended in treetops cloud-like
as bright-eyed, with lashes
for days, you chew and chew
and chew some more,
aware yet heedless of earth,
your tongue purple and long
as an eggplant curled
around a twig in singular
ravenous prayer.You a camel-leopard myth
made manifest, a magic
realist cartoon hieroglyph
with such spindly legs,
an enormous gravity-defying
heart, a neck that stretches
clear from here to the stars.
You remind me once again,
possibility has no limitations.
