Poem in my pocket today better late than well never?
I've been learning from the late Jake Adam York since last year.
Letter Hidden in a
Letter to Cy Twombly
By Jake Adam York
I dreamed I was blind
but could
make a word
by curling a strand of hair
into
letters,
one at a time. I prayed
the scales
would fall.
At night, I waited for the river’s
sentence
to unfold,
a tale of snake handlers, the gift
of all
living tongues.
I could write with a tooth,
the
pencil’s other end,
regardless of the day, could etch
my poem,
salt into windowglass.
Somewhere the lost boat’s gone
mineral,
petrified
in starlight without a bone
to
autograph. Just
one letter in a strand of code.
Given
the right oblivion,
one hand can remember another,
but
tonight, the river
manages only the bark of leather
on
stone, clap
of footpalms on the bank
its one
strand curling
a word no one’s slow enough
to
read.