First Embrace

image borrowed from bing

First Embrace


That song is playing again,
cello solo, long slow passionate notes,
deep, sad, beautiful--then staccato bowing
as the brewing coffee keeps the beat,
filling the air with darkly crushed delight;

hidden birds in the dark, heralding
the day to come, or children’s laughter
soft and muffled on the breeze, clinging
to dawn’s nubile breaths;

standing in an open doorway, catching
a whiff of kelp sliding over the deck chairs,
filling my illusory eyes with tall jagged spires
at the water’s edge, sea stacks, solitary shards
of once continent pulled away from the land,
naked rock sculptures, granite gods
standing hip deep in the waves;

the music combining cello with piano, string cousins
of a different parent, emotions stoked with eerie
earliness, forcing the hard stare to the horizon,
calling up grateful tears while the next chapter
begins to take shape, pages filling with language,

just as the searing golden silkie of morning
rises up steaming and wet from the sea,
and kisses me scalding yellow-orange
full on the mouth.

Glenn Buttkus

March 2012


Listed as #34 over at dVerse Poets-MTB

Would you like to hear the author read this poem to you?