FEBRUARY DAYS FOR MICHAEL HARPER

 SECOND DAY IN FEBRUARY FOR MICHAEL S HARPER

...on good days one could build a synogogue in one’s own city,

call it city of testimony, conscious city of words.

Michael S. Harper, The Ghost of Soul-Making

Thing is, I didn’t know you were gone

so you weren’t. Notes at the back of MichaelTree

best notes ever written I kept saying

letters to friends, Best blue notebook

under lined notes to you what

shook me, shook me finding

I won’t say but you were

and you were there

with me on the tarmac with us we

few so many, trying to show

what you put on the page

a bridge over Johnson’s

book to Barntemps’, a quilt

to Elizabeth Alexander,

her genitalia/ will float inside a

pickling jar...a deportation plane

arrives in half an hour I gotta

be there, asylum seekers count

us too, I want you to know

Karen who quilts, and Rex,

the painter, a colorist we talked

Coltrane, we listened,

your poems psalm-sang

and walking the neighborhood

your words horns of supreme love

what John felt was coming

and Rex painted, he’s painting

again Rosalee Tompkins this time

Jesus and John transfigured, your children

heaven-dressed, a songline,

Michael Tree, these three books

bound by yours, outstanding inbreath

Jim Bodeen

2 February 2021