Ann Muto: A favorite poem

After Too Long A Solitude
by James Ragan

I usually wake and walk about the city,
to free my breath, and with a word
brush the feathers of the tongue, softly,
through a whisper, to nudge the silence forward.
I wade in lugs of seaweed, always along the pier pilings
to be a circling wind to the dimpled waters
or a shout one judders like a pebbled can
to shape a timid voice to laughter.
At noon I load the morning’s memory
with sounds of osprey, their walk-talk
clear and sleek as glass glimmerings.
By nightfall when the sky dissolves
into the red twinings of an intimate light,
I dance my words to the lute of a warbling tanager
And watch the fall moon lilt
into myriads of thatched kindling.

If I could breathe all words into infinity,
I’d drink beyond the mind
all of space an original thought inhabits.
I’d spare no passion in believing that it sings.
I’d touch the sun as if it were new,
as if for the first time to name a thing,
the rust in fire, cloth in stone.  I’d carve the wind
with parting lips to know the ivory in its sensations,
as if a kiss like a gesture, formed a thousand times,
were immigrant to a foreign skin.
And always and in every dance,
I would want to hear each note passing into song
as a beat rising to crescendo, timeless as an insight
or a moon in the shade of the sun,
in spiral spins of inspiration, arriving
at once with being gone.

James Ragan