“Prelude in Grey Major”

Melancholy, most beautiful word,
like a sound some ancient instrument unearthed—
or earthed, its fusion of cave and cloud.

Or cloud, come to think, so close to could,
how the mouth rounds, sounds
not just the shape itself but a sky in which to float,

gentle hills, a home in the distance,
then a whole fall filled with cool sun and stuttered colors
through which one’s walking,

considering the long and polar O of alone,
which has its own beauty,
and a silent one,

hiding like the seal I saw in the strait of San Juan
when the pod of killer whales glided past the rocks.
Another life, as they say, though there is always only one,

sound and mind so mysteriously aligned
one strains to tell if memory’s foghorn is real
or if that’s simply the sound that memory makes.

I was not alone, that much I know,
though no one was with me,
gentle swells, mists tearing and repairing,

and all the fine gradations of greys
like melancholy made visible,
holding its holy like a secret for the end.

This is drawn from “The Dance.”