Passage

By Barbara Guest

for John Coltrane


Words
      after all
are syllables just
and you put them
     in their place
     notes
     sounds
a painter using his stroke
     so the spot
where the article
     an umbrella
     a knife
we could find
     in its most intricate
     hiding
slashed as it was with color
     called “being”
     or even “it”

Expressions

For the moment just
     when the syllables
     out of their webs float

We were just
     beginning to hear
like a crane hoisted into
     the fine thin air
that had a little ache (or soft crackle)

     golden staffed edge of
     quick Mercury
     the scale runner

Envoi

     C’est juste
     your umbrella colorings
dense as telephone
     voice
     humming down the line
     polyphonic

Red plumaged birds
     not so natural
     complicated wings
                              French!

Sweet difficult passages
                              on your throats
there just there
                              caterpillar edging
                              to moth
Midnight
                              in the chrome attic
Copyright Credit: Barbara Guest, “Passage” from The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Copyright © 2008 by Barbara Guest and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest (Wesleyan University Press, 2008)