Voice

 

“Oh, excuse me, did I say something too loud?”  Watch out for the well, it’s a deep one and we’d

have to fill it with stones to get you out, but we need it for the carrots. The dog run is full of crap

and I need to lay down some fresh straw.  Tonight’s a full moon and I hear a woman moves with

the tides.  “I wish you wouldn’t sing.”  The road is long and straight in these parts and if you

blink you will have passed backward.  Sometimes the voice is all that is needed, but the horses

face the wind as if not hearing.  Just around the corner is a place where the earth exhales.  I bring

presents.  “OK, kids…it’s just your Uncle Bub.”  There’s a fridge that needs to be moved

outside, to make room for the new one and the T.V.  Don’t tell me about bloody knuckles.  I had

to work on a Peugeot, once.  And Uncle Dick’s dog ripped the shit out of newspapers and, then,

puked after that.  “Please watch your language.”  And the tides rip into the hundred foot walls of

sediments along the beach where I run naked and laughing.  This is how the world twirls upon

the balls of my ancient feet and I have no shame at this.  “Shhh…they’ll hear you.”  Coyotes are

the conductors of the evening symphony, and they chill me to the bone when they speak.  I’m

not sure that they know they are being recorded.  It is freedom, to lift one’s head to the stars and

scream as if the noise would make it to Andromeda and, perhaps, beyond.  The sound, enough,  

like pissing on a log or a scat pile along the trail.  “Voted ‘Most Likely to Say Something

Inappropriate’.”  Sometimes we look at our feet and forget the trail.  If you stick your head up

your ass, you’ll miss the finale of “Dancing With the Stars.”  I don’t know how the sun will

decide to give up.  It may shrink into an angry fist, or it may expand until the last dinner mint

puts it over the edge.  This is not my concern when my dahlias are dying for lack of water.  I find

cat shit wherever I walk and I never wanted one.  “You don’t need a microphone.”  The giant

salamander lives in swift-moving water.  It barks when threatened.  I have whispered to women

that I love them.  My soft skin undulates into the next muddy place.  “There are children

around.”  When I die, my ass will blow across the desert and collect in the ears of hares and

lizards.  I don’t give a shit about the waves that have swept me away from the shore and, then,

back again.  Here is where I am, in the pile of sand outside a crab home, on a beach in the

tropics.  “I wish you’d keep your voice down.”  And I sing in my dreams, and I sing in the car,

and I sing to my heart, and my sound is who I am.