In the line of Praha

My Prague is soft
And unseen, delicate as a courtyard of roses
Something beneath goulash and tourist
Something quiet and real as water
Smart and beautiful
Scribal and poetical
A font
You could stare at
All night-one
Written in glisten
Read through fog,
I see her often
Through the fog
She is not only
What was broken—those dashes, and ellipses…
She is a mystic
Who sings
In solid silence.
And I’ve gotten
To really know her
Through time
As a line worth tracing
Forever.
And she likes animals and children
And the way an ink pen feels in your hand
And campfires and sausages
And endless conversations far
Into the night. She is like that,
My Praha.
We talk of death
Loss, memory
Underwater synagogues
And fallen crosses
Floating on the river
And drunk tourist
Trying to still gaze
At something deeper
Than they imagined
Her to be.
In her forest
We sip plumb brandy
And chase fireflies
With kids
Towards monasteries
We know are still there
In that glow
That makes even her
Jazz cellars still sing
At night
Into the forest
At night as scho
Of Ramah
A woman’s voice aglow
In lament and stern continuance
Something like an argument that a poem
Can’t die.
//
It took me all day to clear last night’s glasses
From the forest outdoor picnic table
I just couldn’t leave that conversation we all
Had far into last night…
//
Prague is like a refugee
From herself. I miss her
I want her to come home
In the meanwhile
Everyone is watching
The shape of her body
Where she was thrown into
The dark river’s waters.
And even that shape
Is attracting tourist.
While I am just a refugee camp
As I am with people, just waiting
For them to come home.
//
My native tongue is robins, cardinals and hawks
But that’s another story
I speak nations and cultures as well
And many dialects, given
The situations
But mainly in water glisten
And color
The sound of evaporation
And conjoining’s return
But also cranes
And Mexicans singing in the morning
At work. And unfortunately, also
The the cadences of building falling
And wars mounting. I know those also
But they are less clear
The cardinal chirps when it starts to rain
Are my home. That and Spring itself-
In all her ebullient hope.
I can also speak church, synagogue and mosque pretty well
If I tune into the tone of Love, that is. Intonation is everything
With us. And love is a native language to us all.