Music unravels from white sheets
in the summer's night wind.
Treble clefs split from staffs
and five lines become the five fine teeth
of a comb that runs through my hair,
leaving pretty notes to braid themselves
near my roots.
Chords become reins around my ankles
and hasten the tempo of my wandering pace
towards anything but
four walls and a closed door.
So I run
down the muffled carpet
and across the pavement’s pitch,
half steps turning into to whole steps,
my bare feet keep going
till city lights barely linger,
and there are only woods
I keep running –
the entropic ensemble
of ruffling maple leaves
and lilting katydids
urges me to sing lead in
the loudest lullaby,
so my feet belt out the lyrics
in stride with the wind’s rushing harmony,
fine-tuning my freedom at each refrain.
So I keep racing
past the trunks of hemlock trees
and then I charge up the first incline I see;
as I reach the hill’s top with my arms stretched out,
hugging the songs that might otherwise escape me,
the forte of the black sky stops me –
its booming base
the night’s final crescendo.
And then
as sweet sound still reverberates
between silver stars,
I let myself fall on the arches
of quarter rests
in the fireflied grass of June,
tucked in by the acapella beams
of the moon.
