ancient evenings and distant music

a found poem, comprised blending words and phrases
from James Wallers' The Bridges of Madison County with my own

down the path of the old ways he goes.
like the last cowboy
roaming miles of forgotten highway
in his out-of-tune pick up truck,
the lone male humpback
grunts and growls the tune of a wanderer,
whose destiny leads him
in water so clouded that sight is
out of mind, where voice
and the ears of intuition
are paramount.

his sounds creak sensuousness
scrape beauty, whistle magic,
climb and reach
into unused spaces of sky
filling in a lifetime of searching and reflecting.
he moves toward her steadily.
in the vast prairie of the sea,
there is nowhere to go but toward her.

somewhere it plays, she can hear it.
it is far back, or far ahead, which,
she can't be sure.
in his song she hears steaming trains
chuffing out of winter stations
in long-ago night-times,
beating their way toward the end of things.
in a way, she is turning for home, and
toward a place she's never been.

the humpback moves like a
breathing, sailing locomotive
navigating from the rigid, lonely north
to the sweet air
of hawaiian breeding grounds.
his cries come out of darkness,
organ-pipe notes with a hollow echo,
alternations of pitch against time,
covering hundreds of miles by sea water
and searching out her image to the farthest reaches
of reverberation.

with his song, he takes her
where he lives,
strange places, haunted places,
far back along the stems
of darwin's logic.

his cries come closer now;
he shrieks, squeals, bellows:

around the ancient tower...
i have been circling
for a thousand years.
i have been falling
from some high place somewhere
back in time
for many more years than
i have lived this life;
and through all those years,
as verses have been dropped
and changed and added again,
i have been falling toward you.

his cries are short now, more like chirps,
and her body is close enough to touch.

"we could dance if you like."

deep inside her
his long search comes to an end.
he finally knows the meaning
of all the secret cargoes
carried by ships that never sailed

and like the ragged cowboy,
who has traveled distant miles
and now sees the light
of his home campfires,
his loneliness dissolves.

in her cry of welcome,
he is found.

e.r.kover