A Thread of Ubiquitous Light

A Thread of Ubiquitous Light


Sometimes
when I sit quiet in the morning I find
a thread of high pitched sound,
an unending hum that resides at home
inside my brain
beneath
the flutter of self-centered thoughts,
the white noise of cars going back and forth
a train that lugs tanks and ordnance toward a killing field,
sparrows and house finches chirp at each other,
the pigeons flap their wings, the grackles
scream their plaints of hunger and anxious love.
The composer John Cage wrote somewhere
that this high-pitched buzz
inside our brains
is the squeal of our nervous system,
a silken thread that stretches
back through the door of our mothers' womb
where we were all surrounded
by liquid night

is where I first heard my father's voice
saw his face. . .

My mother is dead now. My mother's blue eyes are shut forever,
her breath stopped repeating its magical formula,
and her hand turned cold in mine.

Every day

like a spider in the corner of a room,
I unravel the thread of sound a little bit more
and with the same sacred material
my children and grandchildren do the same.

Bobby Byrd

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