by Jeff McRae
There was music but we meant
magic. Magic of the tall grass
and the open door, in our spells
when we crossed the earth, noses
in the smoke. We whistled,
puckered up and stunned the birds
with words we called urges.
They lifted us. They filled us
when we were face forward for
the fifty things. Even falling down
they sounded like a crown
of sonnets, how we got up over
and over, majestically, looking
over the edge of the bed saying
I love love love you. Later
evening grew like a bruise.
Then night swooped in how you
pull a lover aside and share
the secret you’ve held so long
it’s become unreal, an ancient
bell, a peal, a song, a sing along.
Jeff McRae’s poems have appeared in Massachusetts Review, Antioch Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Salamander, The Common, The Briar Cliff Review, Mudfish, Rattle, and elsewhere. New poems are forthcoming or appear in Mudfish, One Art, and Northern New England Review. He lives in Vermont.
A-minor 