Vessel

Branching the way blind fingers splay across The face they’re reading, trees trace the backyard Ditch sop that their shadows drop off into Space, an abyss where I hear a neighbor boy’s Voice cursing an exhilarated, out of its mind, Unappeasably inventive flow of “Fuck fuck motherfuck” ecstasy that maybe He imagines the neighborhood can't hear?— or is his tongue wired To some source of inspired but as yet unknown Intelligence that radiates from all of us and he Is its mouthpiece, speaking it to the trees That screen him from me listening to his Unrelenting arias, predestined like birdsong Flowing unbidden, of four-letter almost Erotic keening over something I know too, Everybody knows?— and even if all it is Is the “fuck fuck motherfuck” ecstasy Of April budding in his mouth and sending down Roots to some anti-self that sprouts and shadows Him as it croons and shouts the song of its difference— Even then, this Billy whom I don’t think twice about When we meet in the alley and slap palms Or I see him playing alone on the swings of big kids’ slide, Even then is he the vessel of some signal that uses us, Down in the abyss irradiating him so that just this instant Whatever that other uses him for he can’t resist: His voice an instrument of blissed-out torment Until that grip flings him loose— Who knows which of us it chooses to penetrate Next, making us suddenly sweat or shiver, That influence bathing everything budding in profane rays.