Random

A piece for accordion for Roman Yusipey

Random
is as random
does. A gathering,
bricolage, the nostalgia
of chance.

Objects
become themselves.
They return to nature.
Plastic toys, gift wrapping, trashings,
tippings,

wind chimes,
accordions,
mouth organs and Jew's harps,
tongs, bones, comb and paper, coke cans,
fingers,

bodies,
limbs and organs –
anything consciousness
recognises as history
or junk.

They hold
us and we them,
all that is physical
and fraught with random qualities
of loss.

We stand
at street corners
grazed by the wind, unwound
by weather. The sheer randomness
of air.

It's good
isn't it, friends,
to find constellations
of chance events? Is anything
better,

than here
but not quite here,
at this quaint cross-section
of the familiar unknown
moment,

seeking
the chance music
of nothing much at all,
the overwhelming beautiful
absence,

helpless
as anything
randomly nostalgic,
strewn about the sky like music
or stars.