There wasn’t yet a sun.
The sky was still empty.
The man who did this job
before me could stand so quietly.
He could make a whistle from the seed of any fruit.
Once he made a kite out of newspaper
and he told stories about the stars, and about the earth.
He told them to pass the night,
and because his heart was a reflection
in the soul of the world.
You would have loved him,
but it would have been more than that.
I started this without any answers.
I didn’t have a choice.
I had not yet learned the terms for patience
or for holding hands.
I began at the beginning
when words were only pictures.
Later, I’d wait patiently with belief, and
type emails to distant friends.
I would walk in the woods,
sit down there, and turn
and hold the things I’d find.
Or, on some walks,
I’d take photos of flowers and mushrooms
with my phone. Who really cares.
Pull down the covers
pulse, erect, moon, leaf, smell
listen through the walls.
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From ABC Moonlight by Ben Estes, available via The Song Cave.
Ben Estes
Ben Estes lives in Kingston, NY. Before this book, he wrote a book of poems called Illustrated Games of Patience, and one called The Strings of Walnetto Arrangements. Ben worked as the editor of A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind, the poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (with Alan Felsenthal); Photographs: Together & Alone, the photographs of Karlheinz Weinberger and the poetry anthology On the Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writers. He has most recently shown his paintings at Situations Gallery and Paula Cooper Gallery, both in NYC. With Alan Felsenthal, he runs this publishing press, The Song Cave.
