The soft touch
that comes it seems like a long tale
heard when youth first dared
ventured the folly and enterprise
and found for a moment in awakened eyes
the Star of the heavens.

I doubt if its rare
these exchanges of thought
that seem so majestic to me here,
A calling , like a Sofar
that reverberates so profoundly
that the leap of heart combines with faith
and there where once the city stood
was the formulation of a prayer.

Time weeps the complexities
that sing from the hem of the cloth
The little paradox of life
that seems to wing back and forth
between faces, places
and now here us.
The word, that tale of tales
that stream across aeons and back
like the curling locks of the Rabban.

Alisdaire O'Caoimph

(a tribute to richard walters)

under the soft stage light
richard walters performed
a song called awards night
he’d written about elliott smith.
my heart ached quietly
for the ghost his voice carried.

sofar fairy –
as i call her in my head –
said i looked like
i was in the clouds,
living in the memory
of someone else.

his energy followed me
into the next morning at work.
half-stunned, half-joking,
they’d insinuate
my joy must have come
from someone’s warm embrace.

how could i explain to them,
that music and words
can whisper through your ribs,
settle in your chest,
and lift you higher
than any touch permits?

richard’s voice just lingered
like the aftertaste of honey,
like rain caught in leaves.
i carried him home in my pulse,
where elliott still lives,
softly whispering between
the notes of his guitar strings.