TAYLOR MARSHALL

Morse Melody 
Glosa with John Koethe
  
Brimming with the melody of passage;  
One feels the wind that blows the soul about,  
Repeating its inscrutable message;  
And as night falls, one sees the stars come out.  

 
There is a faint hum. Holding  
your tongue captive, it circles  
around words, and shoots  
back and forth in the aphotic  
space between your open lips  
and your mind. The message  
is in Morse code, splayed out  
on the petals of an aster bloom.  
In the in-between: sweet, savage,  
brimming with the melody of passage; 
 
Dot dash dash dot, dash dash dash,  
dot dash dash dot, dot dash dash dot,  
Dash dot dash dash. Don’t forget  
the Coda. It asks us - When does  
it all end, in the end? Singing  
along with ashes, daffodils, doubt.  
I hum a happy song, even in sleep.  
Be gentle with your trowel. It’s  
rusted. Stained red, the budding sprout.  
One feels the wind that blows the soul about.  

There is heather growing on the vine.  
The flies sink into its shade, their  
atrementous bodies a blight. Recalling  
the hushed steps of death’s song  
that Neruda warned about. I’ll aim for  
Dickinson, I’ll step into the carriage.  
Better to sweetly kiss the dying light.  
Wiser to embrace its affirming aria,  
than knock, breathless, against dark’s passage.  
Repeating its inscrutable message; 
 
I never learned to improvise. Could  
only stick to the sheet music, and hope  
no one would notice the flubbed F.  
Minor arpeggios are more mournful,  
and grief, anyways, is not neat.  
Bouquets, sympathy cards, advice about  
how to move on from love lost, all  
get lost in the aether. Decrescendo  
like wilting peace lilies in a drought.  
And as night falls, one sees the stars come out.

italicized lines from “What the Stars Meant”,  John Koethe