Proofing Solutions to Celestial Mathematics

Bright dancing cascading beating rhythms

  Alex Hastings, little boy with dreams of drums

      I watched your planting of his widest flowering fields

         My own soul parched by life’s longest drought

             Waited for the rain that came drumming down

                  Washing clean the blackness from my road.

Recalling crazy sound circus times of your shows

   Quiet moments snatched in funny off beat places

        Parking lots:  of schools, of bars, of coffee shops

            Did I travel all those miles to bring you homemade pie

                 Three kinds—because I should or because I could?

                      Down along a summer’s melting roads.

You held up my life’s mirror

    Reflecting back my mistakes

         I made with you—in turn I knew

             Understanding those my lover made with me

                  Silly fights about cheering creativity

                      Down along our blackest snaking roads.

You taught me how to travel safe

    Along the black snake road

        When I was weary from my search

             I remembered and came home

                 Across frozen wastes of icy seas

                      Down along Nebraska roads.

Perfect rhythm timer with that old guitar

   Only once I’ve heard you miss a beat

      When first you saw me on Holy Ground

           Filled with grief and deepening doubt

               How could I come again without receiving grace

                    Communion of music along Midwestern roads?

Composing my lines of unmetered verse

    Wondering why only songs I write for you

         Play the chords which resonate across deepest spaces

            Singing lyrically to others, never to you.

                I’ve found my lost appetite, my younger voice.

                   Down along the cyber mists of fading roads.

I proof your solutions

    To life’s unbalanced equations   

        Questioning how two could be so close to one

            Yet always apart with separate variables

                 Too much inward thinking, I suppose

                      Down along my life’s ironic twisting roads.

I hear you, my mystical magical musical muse

Calling me home.

                                    January, 2007

                                    along Montana’s I-90