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