Listen to a musical collaboration of this poem with musiconceptime : https://musiconceptime.bandcamp.com/track/i-took-a-day
I Took a Day to Myself from Sky to Throat
I took a day to myself got into the car and just
bought coffee and a donut and just drove
around for hours screaming in the dust
-filled air you can hear
it in my voice now. Above Contra Costa, the settled
smoke
looked like the “Swamp of Sadness”
from the Never-Ending Story—minus any dragons
or luck (these are things not to be found here.)
The round brown hill, a resting turtle shell; do not disturb.
I went up to Lawrence Hall and looked for my city
but that had been rendered by a nothing
a swift blanket of grey climbing
higher than the sun
and I was the only one there
and that had never happened before
the flowers be low a back
roads.
There was an old man standing outside his car as I
took a swift turn. I think, for a second, he saw me
and I saw him and maybe
he heard
the cacophony of noise noise
happening
outside of my car, maybe he saw
the round O of my mouth.
At some point, as I circled
back
home, I thought
about another poem I wrote about
the smoke-ash
as people that we have loved. I breathed
in harder, trying
to take in this loss
like
if I could taste them, then
they were not gone and the trees
the hillsides. The immensity of everyone’s grief
could be breathed. It could be breathed
in and held
and I could hold it
with these unearthly opera lungs.
I don’t sing anymore but maybe
this instead could be my gift
registering the sound of loss
and where it falls from sky to throat.
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