Singer and The Lord of 1000 Faces | Two Poems
Continuance and whispers.
Singer
The old Singer sewing table has four drawers Two on each side Iron legs Dark stain finish And it crosses times threshold. One was in my Michigan home as a child Inherited from mother's mother's mother And I can remember Crawling up to its base and placing my Small and soft hand onto the woven-metal foot pedal Pressing down, watching, wide-eyed as the mechanical wheel would creek and spin into motion. As a child Seeing how one thing can lead to another thing My hand to this pedal to that wheel Seeing how one thing can lead to another thing. But time replaced this memory with other things. Until here in a friend’s Missoula backhouse 30 or so years later That antique table sits across from me. Inviting the possibility that it is all some weave, Some yarn, Some red thread, tying it all together. Inviting the possibility that somehow Things do not exist outside of other things. But melt down and in and toward. In the riverine way that a life will shape and carve, rapid and slow Mother's mother's mother Pump of the pedal, pump of the feet. In breath, out breath Heartbeat. Miles and rotations and years All weaving this garment, All singing this hymn, of Continuance.
The Lord of 1000 Faces
I have heard my ancestry —
the tales of the Irish —
speak of a wind with a thousand voices.
Heard only in the silence
of morning becoming day, day becoming night;
sun to cloud, a rain clearing.
What might be muttered in this winter tempest?
What might be shouted in soft summer breeze?
A land exists
far beyond the realms of Man
where there resides a Lord of a thousand faces
that inches toward
that heavenly door
and whispers —
and whispers —
No more,
No more.