Sunday School

I can't get the music of Yoshie Fruchter out of my head (www.yoshiefruchter.com). Last night opened for the band with some poems. The whole evening reminded me of college. There was a chuch near campus that had an open mic where my friend Erin played piano and sang, and I read poems, and we all gathered around the candlelight on couches and just listened and felt together. It's not often there are places like this, where we can just slip into our hearts. Jonathan held my hand and my friend Karen was on my left and we whispered memory to each other. How we were in this room, in other rooms, in Deborah's house watching the woodburning stove and the cats spoon (I had written a poem about this, but alas, it is only in Karen's memory) I spent almost the entire night in my journal, so much that someone thought that I was reviewing the event and so this is my review I suppose. I tried to explain that I was writing poetry, but how to say words were birthing words, that the touch and breath of others took root somewhere inside. This is how I used to write. Ravenous and inspired. It felt good to go back to that space, something about the dark, about the flickering of candles, of song.

How words make other words. How going back to the Bible doesn't feel like going back. I think about how modern human emotion is...perhaps why Shakespeare lasts...but this is something else. Something about connections, of bridging the gap between the self and other. How when we try to write/sing in someone else's voice, we come as close as we can to loving the other as self. If only governments could try this, if only the people of South Dakota could. If only, we all could taste each other's song. How many voices would then harmonize. Yoshie sings, "Wake up Jacob..." and I can't help but hope this will open our eyes...