For Vic Chesnutt
I used to write
journalism;
now I write
songs.
Sometimes the songs come bubbling up from
the seismic tremors below the whiskey-lake of
the subconscious Mind … swampy songs …
green conquering tendrils, like the Kudzu
vines I saw in Mississippi, Georgia, the
Carolinas … those majestic plant-towers
you see on the cover of R.E.M.’s first
record, Mumur.
Kudzu.
The songs grow and become
weighty and substantial
and singable
and you can remember them
and sing them anywhere and to
anyone.
To you.
Sometimes in dreams I hear
music like a hurricane-train
that rolls violent emotion and
horse-hoof steam into
the fragrant rose garden that is
the night.
Sometimes I catch a faint whisper, a murmur.
And the poem-song is complete, and
everything rests quietly
where it has fallen.