Tuning Fork

Lynchpin of the singing wheel,
          you with the silver of your call
          so tiny and, yes, unmusical

at times, your shiny monotone
          a mere shiver down the spine
          of the steel, the nerve, the wine

glass so quick to speak, to startle
          at your touch, its hollow bell
          overflowing with the chill

that silence drinks. As does the shape
          of seasoned violins who sleep
          beside you in their cases, who slip

at night from some determined pitch
          and form of things. True, we call it,
          as in true north, winter's pivot

we steer below, that we balance
          in the heaven of our compass.
          True, the way the rifle in us

aims to see, to make true the cross
          that sees. True, as in the thrust
          of birth, or death, the things we trust

to be there when we draw the curtain.
          Is there nothing under the sun
          more sure, more fragile than your song?

Of all the birds most like the hummingbird.
          You who hover with the speed
          of the atom, the blur of being

here alive. It's what you hear
          passed as one symphonic rumor
          from string to string, ear to ear,

through the sea of all the sour
          fiddling, our uncertain water
          from which a music crawls ashore.

Straight as light itself—the sound
          you make—as the shaft we send
          flying from the bow of sight.

Not much of a song really.
          Not yet. More of a tune we bury
          in bodies of the tunes we play,

a perfect thing (and so not
          a thing at all) our one clear note
          deep inside the humming planet.

Copyright © 2008 Bruce Bond All rights reserved
from Subtropics
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission