Another section from "Letters to Elena" (chap. 2, Grassblade Light):

         11


  
         When the trembling, expectant overture
 is almost over – when suddenly
 the human song breaks high
 across the brooding score –

  
         then you will remember
 how the word in harmony
 fulfills itself (as poured honey
 streams from youthful hearts forever).

  
         And when you walked for the first time
 out of the summer forest, under
 high humming in the cedars
 where the cicadas droned (rhythm

  
         massed in weightlessness) and
 sound was rhymed with the scent
 of blue-gray pines – it meant
 you would never look back again:

  
         your lot to turn a pirouette each
 way (this way, that way) until
 freedom became a codicil
 encoded in your living will – to breach

  
         each dying fall with a new birth (or
 improvised branching).  Because
 that raven framed against
 the flimsy flow of cloud cover

  
         was drawn by a knife
 with a flowering handle.
 Because that almond stem
 blooms in January... petrified.


      
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