I was enchanted,
once, heard a chant,
over and over,
a wailing Gregorian chant
like Demerara molasses,
Good Luck margarine,
my mother's homemade
bread in long winter
afternoons, soft
sweet steam
in filled mouths

one more language
I don't know
like Latin or Sanskrit,
a language of confession,
for calling clouds
into the lungs,
the breath of dark moist
rum-soaked fruit cake,
a poet's language
I am trying always
to hear, to learn:
no light without shadows
no shadows without light

spilled silence
in my heart's arteries
like clouds of lead
anchored me
to earth, spelled
heart's desire,
arrhythmia really
writing only
erratic, aortic death

now I am learning
to listen with the eyes
of the heart, no
longer mesmerized
or smothered
by another's chants,
learning instead
the rhythms of fire
in you and me