Writer Between Worlds

Heat. April heat. Deep, penetrating. 
This afterwinter sky - unfamiliar, molten, 
aglow - 
splurges on timid leaves, permeates clothes,
and burrows into skin. 

Out by the river I am sitting 
on a log. 
The gulls have just taken off, shrieking, 
treading water, 
flapping their wings against the dormant, 
mirror-cold, 
reflected images of trees. 

Seconds later, suspended, they're cottony like blossoms 
carried by the wind. 
Look at them closing ranks: each one an eager 
follower -  
or are they taking turns? 

Their identical throats all screech to different voices. 
Who can tell them apart? 
What are they saying  
to each other? 
Who are they rebuking? 

Minutes ago there they were, sitting immobile like 
white rubber ducks, 
gliding downstream and bobbing with the eddies. 
Now, slowly dripping, they are taking flight, 
leaving me 
to the afternoon. 

The calm deceives. The quiet is a chorus: 
geese, finches, jackdaws, tireless insects 
rubbing their exoskeletons on grass... 
An enterprise of fertile wakefulness: 
this unassuming feeding of themselves, 
this calling out to mystery, 
this delivering of themselves up 
to the human 
pursuit of reconnecting the fragments - 
they are, each one of them, 
undoubtedly 
whole. 

Across from where I'm sitting, 
on the opposite bank,
a guy is strumming his guitar. 
I can't make out the tune, and yet a melody 
rings out, disperses, circles back, 
weaving itself into 
the fabric of the hour, 
bridging 
the water and
the strangeness, 
healing the chasm 
between his world and mine. 

A poet and a musician 
across the river from each other
("all writing should aspire to the quality of music"),
two raw chords sitting in the sun,
vibrating 
deafened by the warblers 
the church bells 
the boisterous teens  
horsing around on the spine of the levee; 
two chunks of flesh on two tongues of earth 
speaking the same 
silence. 

But not for long. 
The gulls are back 
in the same spot 
(can you alight on the same river twice?), 
impatient, 
unimpressed, 
cackling and jeering, 
drowning out the guitarist 
and my thoughts 
as though we're both 
out of tune.