This poem was written and performed to open a concert in Worcester, MA, on October 2, 2010.  Musicians playing:  Mike Connors, Charlie Kohlhase; Cooper-Moore, William Parker.  An astonishing night of creative music….I was honored to be part of it.

Note: This is the text I carried on stage and worked from, but there was much improvisation from the text.

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When we are free
we do not need to dream of flying

When we are free
we are unlabeled

When we are free
we are in all places at once

Think of a city

Rusted fire escapes
frame dawn bright night
and car horns align
with shouted calls to neighbors across courtyards

Sunday churches
spill their God-seeds into the streets
to praise the day
alongside Saturday night’s hangovers
dew-eyed sleepy children
soft-cored hustlers
sad ancients
bewildered and strong
and rich and poor

In this city of now built on past

one may look up thirty
forty fifty stories
rise to the heights
look down at the rushing street

Think of rivers
cliffs
and
music

Think of a canyon outside the city
cut through to the roots of earth

where a woman sits
at the bottom
by a cook pot
near a carving river

She looks up at the walls
still dark at mid-morning
and thinks of climbing

Water in a pot
just ahead of boiling
sings to her

Listening only to that water voice
she must turn as it commands

Her eyes screwed shut
she leaves her chores
scales shadowed rocks
toward sun above

Climbs
with
that boiling song
in her ear
to the cliff top
and sees the city ahead

Begins to walk

Inside every song
is the voice of water

Water carving stone
Cold water warming
Water above fire
Water just before boiling
Rain on the streets
Rushing down gutters and drains
Fluid clockwork rocking time
that has no need of schedule
Quoting the nameless voices that burble
underneath

Everything we know from books
Everything we know from others
Everything we know
is water

The woman reaches the city
Enters the liquid violet energy
Walks hard streets
Stops before windows
Alleys echoing party chatter
Piles of boxes behind bodegas
Dinosaur rumble of trains and buses
Horns bouncing echo off echo

Night comes in
Ghost fog a redemption
for the punishing day

Think now of a night club
with its far corners dim and busy
crowded with remainders of dinner crowd
Slick aficionados
Novice joy chasers
Students and mages
All in watchful attendance
upon what is to come

Saxophone asters
Trumpet roses
Ivory key-bones
Starflung bass
Grown in fertile underlying soil
of swift sifting drums

The woman stirs with understanding
Water song singing inside her

The woman remembers the tree blown down in the storm
striking the ledge
tumbling down the cliff
into the water
which cried out as it entered

The essence of horn is in blowing and blocking
The essence of string is in striking, permitting, and stopping
No one needs to have explained to them
the essence of the drum
rush of shaken skin
thrumming in ear canals

Look at the shocked eyes
and the odd remastered ears
back in the startled corners
The dinner crowd saying
This is not what we came for
This isn’t what we thought we’d hear

The woman tells them

Do not give this a name you know already
Don’t try to manacle it to the words
harmony
melody
rhythm
Don’t think of formal labels
Don’t limit your attention to its purpose
Do not kidnap this
or hold it for ransom
It is a crime against Essence
to clap music into confinement
There is a trial going on here
This is just the opening statement
This is a broken dam
Just
Know
This
Voice
that is under all
Cutting shape out of raw time
examining the sound of its bones
eroded by current
exposed here
in the banks of the river

She hears the tree crashing
to the ledge unseen crying
The water In the canyon
The water in the pot
Just before boiling
Herself on the cliff side
not falling
singing

And she knows
She need not go home to the canyon
The canyon is an inside song now
Needn’t stay in the city
The city is an inside song now

And you now
Think of yourselves
Soaked in this
Think of the ocean
you’ve plunged into
Inside you now
Think of yourself
So moist with music
Inside the song

Play in the rough surf
Ride the rivers threading into the stone roots of earth
Follow rivulet into silent moss vanishing
Reemerge a spring on granite
Follow the essence of clear
The drum bossing the air
The horn crowning the fire
The bass bursting the earth
Keys and strings damp with music

All flooding all

When it ends
you will know the woman
you will know her as Mother
you will know her as Music
You will know her
as you know yourself

When she turns to disappear
into the healing fog
of the night
To walk past the churches
and the buildings
The neighbors and the blare of horns

When she chooses to climb
back into the heart of earth
back to the pot on the boil
back to the simple river carving beside

You’ll know what she knows
that the Song chooses its Singers
Its Listeners

Now

Think of the doors
you walked through to enter here
The water lapping against them

Outside these doors
when all is done

Altered ears will listen to the shell
you have lifted from the shore
of this new world

and then
you will
know

know Freedom
know the Song