Three Poems in Conversation

 
1. Johnny
 
I drag iron-heavy skin down
streets with foreign names. Foreign.
 
Seventeen months
this is my home. Yet,
 
will these new (to me) words ever feel at
home on my tongue?
 
Throat? Gutterals. I
struggle.
 
I pass two I assume friends
talk-laughing. 
 
Today I am peripheral. A
hearer of songs I don’t sing.
 
I put Johnny Cash in my
ears. His bass-baritone 
 
wraps me in sounds older
than lullabies Gramma Lil would
 
yodel. And her gramma
and so many grammas.
 
From mountains and melodies and 
pathos. Johnny, at this moment I am at home. 
 
2. Listening
 
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
-Denise Levertov 
 
Today I decide not to listen to music             on my morning walk. I decide to listen to
proof-of-life I pass           on Rothschild then Herzl then Lilienblum.            To the voice
in my head             that says, it hurts        I let it              hurt           I persist, resist
the habit to make it tidy             ask why, say     go away.       It hovers, like the whisper-wind,
follows me like the               off-leash dogs with their owners              sauntering in the 
bike lanes all along           this tree-lined street             I hear the ache               in my left toe, hey
walk more slowly, please,               I do, me and the pram-pushers, I catch          the eye of a baby
who squeals               I squeal back, we laugh, I say              silently          thank you        to 
the baby-smile, I smile                       then to the baristas in the kiosks             then to the cyclists
then to the mourners             at home who can’t raise their heads             to live in a state of war
is to hold sunshine         and rain                    and ignore the weather forecast            that always
gets it wrong, like last week                    leaving the house for a performance              without
an umbrella, the forecast showing                       clear skies                   at eleven we exit       on to
cobbled-stone streets and                   nearly hail              and we walk the hour home.    Listening
to the sound                  of rain on stone. 
 
3. finding words before dance class
 
I see my poet friend
before class. We note that there is no
word for
poetry-inspired-by-music.  
By dance. We have ekphrastic,
for art. But, what is art? Tolstoy asked.
We ask. 
Isn’t it all just one dialogue? We wait
for class to begin. Start moving before
even the music. A woman
in a white t-shirt with writing on the back, stands 
in front of us. The writing is words of Whitman, 
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
And my poet-friend asks, where is the word for poetry from t-shirts?