JIM MCGARRAH
HEARING THE FIRST MUSIC
—for Harriet and Jim
When I saw that the cut bank on the Connecticut River
had framed itself with graduated rocks
long before the first man had framed music,
I heard the river’s xylophonic scale on the stones
and soared up eye to eye with a hawk,
between a floor of treetops and rafters of clouds.
Then I climbed a long trail strung with blue spruce
and mountain vetch, each step
toward the crest lifting me through light,
pulling cross-hatched shadows through my chest,
and the music the shadows made on the green ferns
sounded like butterflies falling.
Above empty tobacco barns, indoor cattle farms,
horse paths covered with shopping malls, I struggled
over pterosaurs etched in shale by the same water
that snapped their wings and swept their souls
into the riverbed a million years before,
shrieks crumbling with the sandstone scree.
Sitting on a rock to rest,
my sweat escaped from all life below
and mingled with the mountain mist.
The weight of blood and bone was carried skyward
on the blue kite my father flew for me when I was ten.
I was a raindrop that would not fall again, even in the rain.
