Profound Syntax

I have seen Richmond

Stately old city
Sitting on the Falls of the James River
Where river, roads and train tracks met
Commerce flourished
Human beings bought and sold
Slavery: Virginia’s largest industry

I have seen Richmond
I’ve seen it build roads and stores and even universities
Over the graves of slaves and former slaves
Over the places where they were bought, sold and killed
I’ve seen the placards
Tipping a cap to the inequities of slavery and oppression
And in the shadow of the Auction Block
Now stands the Justice Center:
A great euphemistic monument
To White Supremacy

I have seen Richmond
Where scenic boulevards course through its neighborhoods
And highways, meant to bring people together,
Were carefully placed
To isolate the black and poor

I have seen Richmond
Where the privileged worry more about property values
Than racial injustice
Where an armed black man is a threat
But an armed white man is a patriot

Yes, I have seen Richmond

When they met, she wore
A gold ribbon in her raven black hair.
That’s how he knew it was
Her.

He placed the token in a drawer where she would not see.

Around her bouquet he fastened it, a streak of color
Against the cascade of
White lace.

In their new home, it encircled a vase that had been her mother’s.
They cannot recall who placed it there.

When their firstborn arrived, without breath, she unpinned it from the receiving blanket.
A keepsake that would not be
Kept.

It graced the threshold
As their boys
Took their first steps, first dates, first flights from the nest.

It gently flapped in the breeze
That skimmed the grandchildren’s pudgy fingers as they held the
New fascination.

Now faded and tattered, it and them,
The fabric rested on the bedside table
As his mind struggled to
Remember.
As her body struggled to
Fight the malignancy.

Two rooms, two call buttons. One love.
One gold, tangible piece of their life
Together.

Removing it from his pocket,
He took her in his arms one last time for
One last dance
To the music coming from down the hall.

His feeble hands
Tenderly tied it
Around her snowy white
Hair.

That’s how he would know it was
Her.

The reed at her lips, the strings in his hand,
how making music resembles making love

in its energy and rhythm, the listening and watching,
eyes and mind in tune, the flirtation, crescendo,
the peak, the ecstasy, the release into joy of two bodies,
two forms in sacred symmetry, harmonious elegance,
encased in their oblivious beauty, their world only sound,
produced by mouths and by fingers, by flesh and breath,
let me follow your phrase to that place where the notes lead me,
tumbling forth, as if by some divine plan,
let me meet you in that place,
that trembling triad, that vibrating fifth, that cavern of delight,
take me to the cliff, throw me over its precipice, your suspension dripping from my bow,
embrace me with your voice, with your body of wood, of string,
we need to touch each other with skin, with sound,
gentle, tender, then fierce and enflamed,
our love cascading in a flourish of sixteenths, releasing into euphoric unison,
we make love in cathedrals, in classrooms and concert halls, bars and bedrooms,
discipline coupled with abandon, math and poetry, numbers and hysteria,
an impassioned merging, blending our timbres,
give me your tongue and your bliss so I know not myself, or you,
or any other than this dance of delirium,
we follow like hypnotic monks to the altar, blindly and without knowing our purpose,
drawn toward it as the flame, as the sea, the cross, as the crimson sun,
a manifestation of life’s energy, of our love for all that is,
a celebration of our own beauty, the man and the woman, of the rapture of God, of all of it,
of citrus sweat and crushed violets, of bruised petals and black waters,
of the sparrow interlacing with clouds, spirit blown from our center,
sculpted by hands, by mouths, by breath
falling on the world’s ears mildly as the creek’s gurgling legato,
as the locust’s leaflets fluttering in autumn descent,
or abruptly as an arrow piercing flesh with stinging staccato,
it births new life, potent and dangerous, delightful and delirious,
for a moment not held back by fear, by shame, by doubt which colors our prosaic lives,
we may for once be present and fall into a poem, breathe through it, this ecstasy of minutes,
mind sharp as fire, yet a blurring of forms, of limbs, voices aching like gulls, roaring as the sea,
the body knows what to do, where to go, the music lives in our muscles and our minds,
my voice swells with my blood, with yours, with our blue rapture.

My heart—make love, make music,
ravish me with those twelve tones,
for soon we will be dead
and buried in the solid and silent earth.