after Dean Young
Dean in a story about Coltrane:
how one time in a recording, he hit
a wrong note—a real clam.
In the second take, he hit it again,
this time harder, longer.
The third time, it became the heart—
the sound all the other notes wrap themselves around,
a different understanding of the melody—
the song beneath the song: the stubborn beat
holding up the heaviness of flesh.
Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
and the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.
Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.
and then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return.
