For Therapy, I Mix Metaphors - D. R. James

From a frozen wedge of machine-split pine,

tossed on this settling fire, one frayed, martyred

fiber curls back and away like a wire, then

flares, a flame racing the length of a fuse.

Imagine this an innermost strand, a barely-dirt

two-track off Frost’s road less traveled, a thin,

trembling thread of desire, the uncharted blue vein

of a tundral highway. Or in some dread cloister

it dreams, and a sillier spirit suddenly moves—

like four fresh fingers over flamenco frets,

like dumb elegance uttering Old Florentine,

never meaning one of its crooning words.

It might dance—Tejano, Zydeco, any twenty

Liebeslieder Waltzes, any juking jumble

of a barrel-house blues—wherever arose

an arousing tune, the thrum of a Kenyan’s

drumming, the merest notion of Motown soul.

I do know: there must be this lost but lively cord,

an original nerve, perhaps abandoned, or jammed

as if into an airless cavity of an old house,

where it waits, to spark, to catch, its insulated

nest invaded by the stray tip of a driven nail.

It craves some risky remodeling, that annoying

era of air compressor, plaster grit, dumpster,

and the exuberant exhalation of ancient dust.

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D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press). https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage