Found Music
By Eric John Priestley

there is the music of rain
drums to thirsty earth
& the music of stars
singing the OM
on the harp of space
the music of air
bring back cold
onto the warm face of echo
& mountains call
the tympanum of locust
cicadas filling
a chorus in heat
the cupped hands of thunder
a joy of monsoons
the lightning warns
spilling a mirage in haze
a given day burning
& the night remembers
the faces of clouds
a music of leaves breaking
their fall to earth
taking it where a lost season dreams
the symphony of water runs
through the wheel of stone
a ring & a promise
beneath the long time sun
the millet soldiers stand
& the palate of love learns sweat
as the taste of human juice flowers
up through the beating wings of birds
the moment of abandon knows
given up to blood & muscle
bursting with apples & pomegranates
a load of duck eggs & oyster blossoms
as we loose ourselves in each other once more
death march in the shadow of betrayal
sleeps on symbols of waves
a characterless whispering
wordless words to moonlight
filling the idiot-soul of all movement
with the glory of being
a stillness of birth
that becomes the music of thought
as it twines in rivers
of written & spoken
a dumb player raises his head
one broken note
lost in his part of the dance:
a singing of eyes
breathing on these words
that will love me back
a nod of all knowing
the sound of no song…
Yes!

Eric John Priestley, a veteran of Budd Schulberg’s Watts Writers Workshop, has recently had his most recent novel, For Keeps, published by Otis Books/Seismicity Editions in Los Angeles. Currently, he teaches at the Henan University of Economics and Law in China. This poem previously appeared in  Black Renaissance Noire.