Apocalypse in Song

SKIING ON SOLSTICE,

practice for what’s coming.

Music for non-participants

in a participating family.

This is music: Lower lights,

Los Lonely Boys. Silent

Night, nothing else, all bright.

High Camp Winter Solstice.

One could almost forget

why one comes. Hoarfrost

outgrowing fir needles

they came from. Yesterday’s

rain what we had then. Shine

your light on a mountain,

Song coming first, shine your light,

from Bi-lingual Aretha--

English and Latin in her Daddy’s

Detroit church, stone-cold,

arriving in car stereo, elevating

sensibility. Adore,

adorare, speaking formally.   

Asking in prayer. To call to,

from orare. Ritual in song,

O come let us adore him,

Songs in a dark time—

voiced memories, mixed.

Boys from North Dakota summers

in choir gowns. We Three Kings—

boys becoming, jack knives

in pockets beneath robes, tried to smoke

a rubber cigar—it was loaded

it exploded –if they could

hold it now—following yonder star—

director and congregation alike

might think it wasn’t what

they heard—but they can’t,

and once you’ve heard,

seen, ejaculate dripping from nostrils,

song gone forever, like the boys

who will try again and again.

The little shits. Shine all your light

on them. Go on, reclaim

the music, tonal response

to the friend, his gift of song.

What child is this?

Laying in a manger. Jesus.

Little Lord, cooing, not

offended in the least, preferring

even then, those boys

with jackknives, their tricks

sticking in grass beyond

and between outstretched

fingers. Spaces between notes

all is calm, calm down, calming

cold and dark. Solstice itself,

sun down Aretha’s excelsis deo

Motown mine, more of this,

boys watching fire, Star River,

we might not have been so hard,

lower lights ourselves, not kings,

that song our guide.

[for Rob Prout]

Jim Bodeen

22 December 2018