A famous singer's longtime guitarist
just released his first solo album. He's in
his seventies, spent decades inside
someone else's songs, providing
the opening riffs, the endings. Perhaps
it's unsurprising that words like end
or beginning grow soft with time.
In a radio interview, he talks about
waking up one morning, wanting to open
another door, follow where it leads Once
I may have thought that starting over
meant burning things down, throwing
other things away, leaving only the bleached
sheen of floorboards. At the end of this street
that people call a dead end with no outlet,
the river is just humming to itself. In some
front yards the grass is freshly trimmed,
and in others the green is long-haired,
even defiant. And time itself is a room
inside of which we continue trying on outfits,
arrangements, stacking and restacking cups
and dishes, wiping dust off headboards, shining
the silver; sorting the trash from recyclables,
vowing not to speak to each other ever again.
Perhaps things that stop or vanish haven't really
gone into the dark, but into a freedom I'm being asked
to consider, though I don't understand completely—
Even the hero is told to lash himself to a raft,
surrender to the water and to the fickle gods
who request sacrifice, and then like stars
release a little light from a great distance.
