Over the Orchards of Selma
____________________________________

—for Larry Levis

I'm listening for the music of elegant Spanish
Insults from your father's grape gleaners,

Johnny and Angel, for dust

To crackle over Vivaldi on vinyl
In your father's dark room,

For the chants of girls
Outside because I can't help it.

It's the rhythm I like. “We all fall down,”
Sings to me now, sweetly

As Monk's pinky commanding
The clouds to part

Through a simple pressing of keys. God damn
It all is what my father

Would bellow. I'd come home,

Four in the morning, doors
Slamming, birds singing.

He couldn't help it.

He listened for me.
This was our pact,

Congealing the blood. That’s all

There is to sleep on. I'd like to
Join those girls, talk
Until someone listens,

To their father with the bat,
Whisper in his ear that it's possible

To make a bat’s grain confess
The sorry incongruities of the gnostics

If you're ever going to have a good time,
And find your way home.

Instead, I’m off to McGlinchy’s
To toast your wren

Who flew backwards into eternity

As a poem, and made it.

We'll break and sink
Nine-ball. Those who smoke

Can, those who need to call home
Should. We'll call out from work,

We'll call out over the orchards of Selma,

Their white flags, as if there were something
To surrender to, singing

“Cielito Lindo” as long as we can
Stand it, as long as our cracked

And cracking voices,
Like the rotting angels

We are, will let us.

 

From Vigil by Alexander Long, 2006

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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