Catherine Van Herrin

I knew a man who made a really great record
Bursting from mirror, mantle, and table,
The music all over us, black flats and sharps,
The room standing still and hushed
Small pots of maidenhair fern and variegated ivy
Trained flat against those church-stone walls
Italian gardens, ponds and marionettes
Were all over that song

I knew a man who made a safe space for me
A tightly clustered huddle where I could
Stay amid the bars and harmonies
While forgetting other, Icelandic rooms
The fireplace ashes, boxwood, half-split of oak
or hickory

The roaring blaze
Exhausts quickly

This is the kind of man he was
A man who wrote music on a machine
and laid it to rest beside his pillow
This is the man who made a really great record
a record of my survival
Among the resinous twigs of white pine
baiting me to Need that Fire
Eating the wood molecule by molecule
Like a ravenous golden
angel