Sand Song

It’s good that the sand captures the sound.
The silence is heavy and deafening
but if you’re willing to take the scorched steps
or buff your skin smoothing and sorting the grains,
the notes will rise to your ears, stick in your teeth,
cling to the corners of your eyes and hum like
a shell song in the depths of your head.

If the sand did not suck the sound from air –
if it weren’t hungry for the weight of chords,
jostling to the beat, thumping the rhythm up
through the soles of your boots to the soul;
if it did not cling to the waves and peaks of a strummed string
and weave itself into a vibrant carpet of vibration,
where might I go? How could you ever find
me if my songs were left to run loose and unrecorded
into that terrible sky?