Why You Fly

i heard elvis costello singing ‘alison’ today

steel guitar and a mandolin

behind him on the stage, 

his voice finally finely crumpled

by the million collisions of encroaching old age.

he leaned back from the mic

to sing ‘the bartender turns the juke box

way 

down 

low’

and his voice filled the room

with the strength of his convictions

instead of the strength of microphones.

all the amplifiers in the world

can’t bring a mouth that close to an ear.

all the powers of this electrified world

can’t bring my fingers any closer to you

than when they brush the strings

of this guitar.

i wanted to sing

straight into your heart

but i let the machinery keep up apart,

conquered by fear that my faltering voice

wasn’t power enough.

‘i know this world is killing you,’ he sang,

‘but my aim is true.’

i turn off the lights, unplug the sky,

recede to human size, and

say for once what i mean 

which is simply

‘i love you.’ 

that’s my only song.

I’m sometimes confused,

words come out wrong

and my fingers are stupid—

they grope for chords

i’ve known since childhood:

i lose sight of the truth of a minor and c,

i lose sight of love

and find complexity—and with it always

soft sorrow and tension, 

high harmonic structures,

upper dimensions, 

paths curved in time,

time curved in possibility.

my life takes the form

of a series of lines intersecting connecting 

the silk of the sky 

to the dust of the coal mines;

the smiles of lovers 

to the handlesof coffins; 

the math of the seasons

to the men taking off 

in their amplified rockets

bound for the heavens

and lost to the earth,

humming songs from childhood

to shield their human ears 

from the thunder of engines

those machines that compel us

to rise from our beds

pay homage to power

and leave all that matters for darkness, vacuum,

pinpricks of starlight perfected.

they hang there, weightless, these lost men,

observing the empty heart of the sky

while all they love--

the smoky rooms

the steel guitars

the fragile courage of the human voice

the futile optimism of the always-open ear--

all these wonders spin away beneath them.

they hum to themselves their childish tunes,

prayers unheard beneath the roar

of engines firing, turning them finally earthward.

‘my aim is true,’ elvis was singing; ‘my aim is true.’

when i come down and the roaring stops,

i will touch this silent soil

strum that long-lost simple chord

place my lips close beside your perfect, optimistic,

ever-forgiving ear, and say

‘i love you.’

‘i know,’ you will answer.

‘that’s why you fly.

and that’s why you return. 

i know.’