Restless

Music unravels from white sheets

in the summer's night wind.

Treble clefs split from staffs

and five lines become the five fine teeth

of a comb that runs through my hair,

leaving pretty notes to braid themselves

near my roots.

Chords become reins around my ankles

and hasten the tempo of my wandering pace

towards anything but

four walls and a closed door.

So I run

down the muffled carpet

and across the pavement’s pitch,

half steps turning into to whole steps,

my bare feet keep going

till city lights barely linger,

and there are only woods

I keep running –

the entropic ensemble

of ruffling maple leaves

and lilting katydids

urges me to sing lead in

the loudest lullaby,

so my feet belt out the lyrics

in stride with the wind’s rushing harmony,

fine-tuning my freedom at each refrain.

So I keep racing

past the trunks of hemlock trees

and then I charge up the first incline I see;

as I reach the hill’s top with my arms stretched out,

hugging the songs that might otherwise escape me,

the forte of the black sky stops me –

its booming base

the night’s final crescendo.

And then

as sweet sound still reverberates

between silver stars,

I let myself fall on the arches

of quarter rests

in the fireflied grass of June,

tucked in by the acapella beams

of the moon.