Ear to the ten

Listen. This you must hear.
If you get wet listening,
wet as a split pomegranate,
you’ve been wet and red before,
and you’ve died the death before.
Forget. This you must hear
even if it brings down the house.
Music like this you’ve never heard,
more than we ever bargained for.
Call Miss Pennyroyal from the parlor,
and tell Columbine not to fret.
Something is singing green shoot
out of the knot at the base of the tree.
Things are coming undone.
The ocean is coming in, the entire sea.
No twits now. What’s coming
is coming. It looks like a woman.
She’s saying, “Come with me,”
and we will. We’re going with her.
All of us. What’s keeping you?
She has seaweed in her hair.

Listen. Listen. Ear to the ten!
The binding’s scarlet, a true red-blue.
Voices are singing that never sang
when we were new, young to life,
with nary a clue to the cookie cut,
to how our ears were stopped,
our tongues set to wagging,
the bulk of us hung from rafters
swaying and swinging.
Womankind is being sung, my dears.
Miss Pennyroyal, Columbine,
are you coming? Now’s no time
for dallying or minding who and what,
how the words are cryptic.
Fuss and folderol about sea change
is of small matter. Dress up.
In the flick of an eye. Put yourselves on
as if they hadn’t buried you,
and you weren’t resurrecting,
maybe thinking of being born.
As women, heaven help the gender,
honest-to-our-selves women.

Penny, Columbine, no dawdling.
We are gathering, little doves,
thousands of us, octillions.
Meg is playing piano, raising the roof,
opening the tops of our heads,
and the old walls are collapsing.
Grab your bitter bones and come.
It’s past time. You have no choice,
but to listen and hear. Are you coming?
Where are you? Must I go on calling
as if I were a mad banshee
rammed in the father-god’s pocket?
Are you earless? A pretty pass
I must say and not to my liking,
as if the same mother hadn’t had us.
The singing, sisters, is for us,
the sounds of broken ice and china
just old church stones giving way,
frozen music crashing down
on the props and the fake scenery.
This we can’t miss. Not and live, sisters.
Not and see ourselves through.