Incalculable Musical Researches
By Roy Dean Doughty
Written 6/30/08
Just at the cresting top of the gigantic fan
Of this sycamore, a breeze, not very far
Removed from its mother, the sea,
Innocently alchemizes the dark/light swiftness
Of greens into murmurous silvers.
The sight sees these dancing metals against
The foil of a June-noon-blue of sky, and a body,
Not wholly physical, sails up to the flighty, defuse
Surfaces, and rubs fingers, hands, forearms,
Forehead, hair against the revelation, trying to make its
Own integral, resonating marks to weave
Human and tree together in a fermenting
Copulation of sap and vision, blood and leaf-sensation.
The mundane greatness of this coronation,
For a moment re-establishes the empire of peace,
Whose sovereign still beautifully deifies
And unites the numbers of music, mathematics,
And the sky. This is how that perpetually winged,
Yet fleeting, dissolution differentiates between
Precise questions — “Who created this magic? —
And spontaneous assertions — “Stand erect.
Inhale a complete breath. Release same.”
Now we can exile that accountant, who is
Always commanding us to submit to the rules of putrification.
And now our 25,920 daily responsibilities
Can no longer resist the reign of lucidity.
Because now, the other, the one in the tree, the one of the tree,
The we that bursts free from the binding strictures of me,
Insidiously invigorates the body
With the thrashings of the hybrid sycamore,
So that the whole of the ocean mated with noon and the sky,
Sweeps overhead, and gathers unweighed silvers,
Like stars touching stars, chiming and chiming,
Without recourse to numbers.
