Benicia Love Poem: Carmen in the Morning

Carmen in the Morning by Lenore Wilson

Break of dawn when he would slip

the record from its mighty sleeve

and carefully lead the needle to groove—

little sailor that rounded

that dark orb of song

until the canary wakened

in its September cage

and cried out with the azure

keening of flute; and from

where I slept I saw

that feathered goodness

swing like thought, or the gypsy

soul hovering between half-sleep,

half-dream; semesters

when we lived

in our cramped apartment

with its window wide

overlooking the bright universe

of learning and into the fields

where the combines turned

and re-turned the late harvest

wheat, where boreal forests

still echoed hoarse from the ringing of

chainsaws, and farther still

into that indecipherable kingdom

where our offspring

were choosing their guardians,

protectors, and where

the ancestral angels

rushed down from their precipice

like water in a funnel rushes

into the deep or acorns rain heavy

from a shaken oak, and

gazed downward into creation,

into its most inmost chambers;

and suffering unwittingly 

from great poverty

or wisdom, these marksmen 

of conscience,

bargained on us.