Power lines trace your line of sight,
high tension at the vanishing point.
Climbing-spikes in the poles
belong to a special character set:
braille for the feet — up and down
this alphabet like scales,
a language that leads to the clouds.

Gnash of soles on fine gravel;
you are moving past the trees
and the trees past you,
everything’s turning, as Dr. E.
explained, depends on your frame of view.

What does this have to do with your voice,
other than Munch’s moonlit painting,
dark vibrating columns set off
by the white throat above the white dress?

Though we run before we walk, and dance
before we sing, that soon the voice
wanders into your walking, and the wind
flies over in packets like an owl of air.

At the top you are a spur
on the backbone of the mountain,
divide the beating city
from the random moor.
Everything’s alive, don’t worry. 

© 2004 by Roger Greenwald; all rights  reserved.

Three other poems by Roger Greenwald  are available only
in the printed version of the ARS INTERPRES