Bruce Bond
a poem
**
Spruce
....................Dear guitar,
songs die, it’s true, and so on.
Tell me something new. Songs die,
and so our memory of them
increases. You of all things
know this, drinking up the shine
that falls from passing clouds
of hands. Sure, we will forget
our hands, our place in the music.
To be in the music is a deeper
stream of forgetting. I am thinking
of a river’s language I spoke
once to myself in a moment
before morning, unsure
what it was the water meant.
New as you are who knows
how you will sweeten,
if in the stutter of my misgivings,
through the child’s fugue
of starting over, you will open
your chamber wider with age.
The closer the body the lighter
the gate, the stronger the current
of dark stars that pour right through.
All things in the river, you say,
are the river. This body,
is it what I am. Or what I have.
And who are you at the threshold,
you without eyes, ears. You
with the lamp in your varnish.
Who made you such a language
for loss, your heart carved out, your awe
the mouth of the black rosette.
**
return to sawbuck 1.9
**
Bruce Bond’s collections of poetry include Cinder, The Throats of Narcissus, Radiography, The Anteroom of Paradise, Independence Days, and a new volume entitled Blind Rain forthcoming from LSU Press. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry, and many other journals. Presently he is Professor of English at the University of North Texas and Poetry Editor for American Literary Review.
**
Spruce
....................Dear guitar,
songs die, it’s true, and so on.
Tell me something new. Songs die,
and so our memory of them
increases. You of all things
know this, drinking up the shine
that falls from passing clouds
of hands. Sure, we will forget
our hands, our place in the music.
To be in the music is a deeper
stream of forgetting. I am thinking
of a river’s language I spoke
once to myself in a moment
before morning, unsure
what it was the water meant.
New as you are who knows
how you will sweeten,
if in the stutter of my misgivings,
through the child’s fugue
of starting over, you will open
your chamber wider with age.
The closer the body the lighter
the gate, the stronger the current
of dark stars that pour right through.
All things in the river, you say,
are the river. This body,
is it what I am. Or what I have.
And who are you at the threshold,
you without eyes, ears. You
with the lamp in your varnish.
Who made you such a language
for loss, your heart carved out, your awe
the mouth of the black rosette.
**
return to sawbuck 1.9
**
Bruce Bond’s collections of poetry include Cinder, The Throats of Narcissus, Radiography, The Anteroom of Paradise, Independence Days, and a new volume entitled Blind Rain forthcoming from LSU Press. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry, and many other journals. Presently he is Professor of English at the University of North Texas and Poetry Editor for American Literary Review.
