in air and ear

by David P. Miller

In Air and Ear

Alive most between rain and drop,

the stays between

one strike, the next, each

             with its ear-beat.

This fluidity, I want it,

the inaudible paths

             down window glass.

A meditator divided by distraction,

when with a clock that speaks

each second aloud,

                                  I’m learning

not to count each mental numeral.

              The heard ticks blur

toward a sound-stream.

The kitchen hosts two second hands:

                alto and tenor.

From the room behind them,

              layered percussion,

cymbals, drumheads

              rubbed, stroked.

                               Beats and counts

rivered like timepieces melted to magma.

I want to live at the margin

where tasks lose their edges,

resemble beings who meet me

with modesty, like tides.

Now the written agendas thin.

I want to live by stages

             of to-do dropping toward to-be.

I don’t write down write poem,

for example. I either write it

             or I don’t.

Cloudbursts aren’t chronometers.

They’re irrelevant to stopwatches

and countdowns.

                             But single drop to torrent,

yes, like music from the next room:

fixed in digital pits like fossil particles,

in air and ear as billows.

Photo of David P. Miller

BIO: David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. His poems have received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations, and have appeared in Meat for Tea, Lily Poetry Review, Reed Magazine, About Place Journal, Solstice, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, SurVision, Vincent Brothers Review, and Nixes Mate Review, among other journals. His poems “Interview” and “And You” were included in an issue of Magma (UK) focused on teaching poetry to secondary school students. He is a member of Boston’s Jamaica Pond Poets.