Inbetweening
August 18th, 2007
No more inbetweening,
No more seasons intersticed,
No more crawls among holes in the knitting,
never quite crag, never quite loam,
neither abalone nor foam,
always wet clay and never kilned,
always the cutting room, never the film.
No more inbetweening,
No more squinting for the fixed flagpole
in the hill-heart of settled country,
when what I always got instead
was this gypsy mind
& fresh earth in my boot tread
& tents forever breaking down
at midnight gunshot
when border war sets flame
to maps & charts just drawn.
No more inbetweening,
homeless in my own bones,
No more floating music,
never resolving to the last root tone,
dissonant for so long now
that my heart now beats in time
to my skull’s discordant rattle,
No more inbetweening,
shut the piano cover,
black out the keys,
black out the wavering singing
like a blanket over the birdcage,
lift the foot off the sustain,
lift the foot off the pedal,
swerve me hard right,
I won’t hold the center.
