Sonata

(notes from 80 sheets of ease-eye paper)

I keep wishing I could write a sonata
below hundreds of short rhythmic pulses,
and pools of water
for the music maker
the free drifter
the released sailfish of light.
For the dip lift turn tumble down,
turn lift hover collapse,
for the expand collapse and dip,
for the neighborhood sign: Warehouse Company—Bond and Free.
I'm getting used to falling
into a pinprick of light.
I am getting used to falling
into the elongated leaf darkness
as the sun walls up fire,
pierces
a solid that's difficult to see into
like my own eyes.
Following an episode
ripping me
beneath many surfaces
a certain 'way',
exhaustion, rebirth
dissolving the crab blackness
into some wind and a seat of granite.
What is this all about?
There is so much in me
against me
and the cat with the moonlike face is crying.
We still see her lovely golden eyes,
taste night on our tongues
and find a sun at the edge of the hills.
So perhaps I can find a beginning and a rhythm
like when I was first in love
and did not want the book to end
and did not want to leave the building.
(The night before
I was walking down a dirt road.
Abrupt closeness changed everything.
You did not see me alone, frozen.
And I knew your
what if, what if, what if?)

© Erika Bauer 1991

Recorded by Suzanne Ruscigno at Mills College for a short film entitled Sonata.