Art: Light Music 33 by Roger Camp
THE GUIDE AWAKE
Should we have stayed home and thought of here?
—Elizabeth Bishop
Questions of Travel
Pale sun and the pinprick pains
return to your body like seasons
each cruel-pretty morning.
Coffee quick, then breakfast.
Begin again, like repeated bars
in sad, over-written music.
Cold commute bus. Rough music
leaks from a kid’s headphones. Your pain
is misplaced, like steel bars
on a third-floor window. Baseball season
coming up at you fast
as a pitch on an Arizona morning.
T-shirted tourists ready for your morning
circle. You want a voice like music
and a driver who rolls fast
through yellows and takes pains
to keep your body from being seasoned
with bruises as you speed past bars
and landmarks. New construction and rebar
slow you to a crawl but catch morning
light like a shortstop late in the season.
Remember, now, that visual music
is your job. You have to explain
it all while not talking too fast
to make sense. So your cold breakfast
has bounced around. A motorcade bars
progress through two lights. Sirens pain
your ears as you dissect the morning
for people who treat your words like music
they don’t like. So starts the tourist season.
But it means a big-league season
too and pitcher’s arms grow fast
in desert light while bats compose music
with leather and landmark bars
migrate. They’ll return some morning
to relieve lost souls of their pain
and your tiny pains are meant to season
a spring morning. Flowers bloom too fast,
becoming only colored bars and light becomes music.
About the author:
Mark J. Mitchell’s latest novel, The Magic War just appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in the several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. Three of his chapbooks— Three Visitors, Lent, 1999, and Artifacts and Relics—and the novel, Knight Prisoner are available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.. He lives with his wife Joan Juster and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.
Art: Light Music 33 by Roger Camp
In the artist’s words:
Biography
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