an unfretting wish

When the Fiddlers Gather

Now they are become more than men we must know how
to tune up, to take
their flying root-and-stem light of joy
from each old hand as it pumps under the dunesigh
and liver-spotted leaf, learn
from lean gray men
hunched on a rail and singing to the waters the beauty
of breezeless gull-dotted dusk.

This one, his time come, nods, clamped jawbones
patient as a crab's,
years of notes loosed now, ear tufts and
silver hair drifting like streamweed, sways, pours
down his last gamboling sweat
for the world to out-
sing itself. Then another from the bed of his leg
lifts fiddle, begins to cuddle

and counterstroke the dying-out strain that a gone
grandfather sang to
the end like a man fearing God (so cries
the tune-whipped and untucked brother of their
right hand.) When he buckles,
the next bows quickly
in feeling his boots already tapping the dark line
of his hewn fence. It must be

like entering a world where every breath turns dead
reckless and pure as gull
song tuned by nothing but ribbed sea light,
where hard-headed fathers rise up slowly
among crocus and bluebell as if
only moments before
sleep whined like a gnat. And it could be standing
simply in the lightning-

like motions of such nameless, hardly to be believed
angels, we come at last
into the unfretting wish to be nothing else.
for there rises from bow's graze and struck strings
not only land's lute, but eerie rapture
stunning the sailor
who feels at first daybreak a peace slicing wrist-labor
as if before storm or prayer.

--Dave Smith, from Floating on Solitude

image courtesy of Georgia Rhythm
http://www.georgiarhythm.com/

And you can hear Dave Smith reading some of his poems here:
http://wiredforbooks.org/davesmith/