C Ling

Like walking atop pins
across a skin of sky

these are hopes like the songs
of a tribe who forgets
to fight
to survive
and to linger on

my thoughts so brief, so quiet
In the hush of mourning's riot

like the man who grabs
at little ears
and shouts
and shouts
so his words can be as water
fleeing from mouths of rivers

I the cutting of things oblique
As a true word lost in rhyme

you spoke as I knew
of what broke
and what is new
but never as it was
what is still

what true amazement is to me
to hear a song, not history

Like walking atop pins
across a skin of sky.


===============

I really haven't a clue when this was written except that it was likely high school. I think this was one of those I read to a smokey cafe in Haight-Ashbury the night I saw city lights books for the first time.

I wonder how Scooter and Bowsprit are faring. . . I miss my poet-heroes.