Flute

My first word had a hollow in the middle,
a breath to blow a wish from a candle.
I backed away from the wall of a canvas
to see the dry leaves falling into focus.
I read once there is an angel of history
who faces us with wings of fire, her body

blown backward through epistemes to come
in ever deeper exile from her home.
Dear Reader, she writes, when you read this,
swallow it, drink. Think of it as music
that is, like history, made of lost time,
time recalled, and a resonating chamber.

Today I read a letter by a friend
too beautiful to bear. Sometimes he sends
word the precise moment that I wake.
When I am most alone and breakable.
Today I stood too long in the shower
like a soldier. What good is beauty now.

I have heard that and looked to the garden
some call nature, others conversation.
I have heard our oldest instrument
is a flute made of bone. And in the past,
people came together by the fire,
to marvel at the bone with a hole inside.