Cadenza
I watch your hands at the keyboard
Making music, one hand with a tiny jot,
A birthmark I think where finger bone
Joins palm, mark of the fish,
Living thing in search of a watering
Hole set in a walled garden,
Or in a field with all the fences torn:
Where I hear your father cry into the wind
That beats against stones in a small town
Where you were born; its cornfields
Skyward pointing, never sown, never
To be reaped, flagrant, immortal.
Copyright Credit: Meena Alexander, "Cadenza" from Quickly Changing River. Copyright © 2008 by Meena Alexander. Reprinted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
Source: Quickly Changing River (Northwestern University Press, 2008)