from Fireweed Poems Departure Tree "Music is continuous. It is only we who turn away." Henry David Thoreau (frequently quoted by John Cage) QuickTime Mp3 or listen in streamed RealAudio

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The sound of a farmer knocking
on the wood of his kitchen table:
—you can hear the fact that the truth
of love is never lost.

     Physical things,
     some precious,
     some more like habit,
     come and go,

but the sound of knuckles on worn wood
somehow remains the same. His grandfather
made it, his father made it, and, knowing
full well his wife no longer
hears it, and that the neighbors in houses
standing in fields they once farmed
together do not care to hear it,
he makes it now alone. Then he stops, listening,
looking down into his morning coffee.

His father used to tell him the story
of how, when the settlers first
came here to clear and plough the land,
what enchanted the natives most
was the taste of the settlers' sugar.

     As a boy, he always
     wondered by what sound,
     by what word, they would
     have called it?

The sound of voices:—
Thank god for radio. The price
of soybeans and corn.

White oak. The straight, tight
grain of long, dry summers. Black
worm holes that a man of words might
ponder. All the polish of work
that breathes, folding into the rich fields
of the present moment.

He touches the wood,
still hearing his grandfather's voice
preaching to his father,

"Even God's gotta have a stick with two sides."

They were talking about the government,
then. War. Freedom. Money.

Some things are always the same.

Taking the metal cup off
the cooking stove, spirits
rising with the smell of boiling
black coffee, he shakes his head
and asks out loud of himself,

     "When the cup is broke
     and no more use, where
     does the circle go?"

He can still hear them laugh—

That's how they talked.

     "Sweets are always the first thing missed
     and the last to be forgotten."