• • •
Come When the World Cracks Open
Come when the world cracks open.
Come to where the old road written on the land
in crests and cradles
draws lightly aside for elder trees.
It does not have the job of slicing
property
from property
here.
Come in the backlit glamour of morning
when datura has not furled her moist trumpets.
Sycamores cleave stone
to raise their spiky cloud of exultation, wrens
drape song across the air.
Here, in the democracy of light, each pebble
is equally real.
Carol Haralson
from At the Far End of O Street
They never shot family movies — too bourgeoisie, too self regarding.
Too needy of our attention. Too false. Too creepy. Too real.
To implant their image on the future, they depended upon
photographs in leather albums or upon the bar or the Steinway
in silver frames — frames that were cleared away when a
hired trio or a guest with sufficient skill merited the lifting
of the lid to allow the instrument full breath.