The Sheet Music of Place

1.

The river through its centuries has made a line on this place,
A child's line,wanting to be straight but distracted at every move,

A little left, a little fast, around a big rock, sliding straight away
Through sand, thiscrawling, leaden line echoing

The line made by the tops of the mountains in silhouette against the sky.
The railroad track makes another line, a double line-

The highway, too, and the telephone poles strung with wire.
All these lines work in sure if uneasy concert

Written on the arid air of this place, which has made everything
Dry and white,off-white, some darks but on their way to white,

All this landscape a great and delicate paper.

2.

These lines make a musical staff borrowed from the world of dream,
The world that then fills these lines with its profundo notations,

The careful placement of one moving thing next to another,
The train engine and its cars-those drudging bass notes,

Birds everywhere in their thrill, 64th notes every one,
Everything scored onto the pages of this world suddenly heard.

Day and night, that ceaseless baton, unforgiving metronome:
Bees lumber along but their work is to stop, whole stops and half,

Busy at their honeying, these respites of work, these moments loud
Too-resting the ear so as to hear composed this place into music-

Every sound a new performance of the great song of this world.