For Tom Verlaine

Tele-: span the distance,

-Vision: observed gratefully, every note a ghostly image, then silence.

It’s that silence that you learned to master here on Mars,

Or on the Moon. Young me still throwing notes in a pile, listening to you, and hearing the ground expand upward.

Years later, I’ve not mastered your economy, but that jagged b7 still hangs, unresolved.

The essence of the first years remained.

Still the same penetrating glance:

“This same feedback was here thirty years ago.”

Still the same sharp jabs, and shivering vibrato;

Still the same inscrutable shadow.

Others torn out by the roots in pages where I first tried to put what I heard into words.

It grew, over the years, to this. With this. Through this.

Then carried to the end and beyond. With people you never knew or needed.

D teeter and Bm totter. That scale’s from Mars! Where did the beat turn? Two chords into infinity. The skies reflected in the harbor.

(C) 2023 Dave Soyars