You can hear the click, in the dark, in the heart, in the silence.

A note, then another, flows over the crowd, a wave sliding up

the sandcastle wall, washing it down to nothing, taking it back to the sea;

this pearl of a note, repeated into a strand by the velvet breath,

the long boned fingers and the flash of gold trumpet that joins them.

 

It’s not as if black was a color, it was a thing you either touched

or didn’t, not by mood but on principle, the kind associated

with flags and floats, cowgirls on horseback their legs spread over

the muscled spine of a black quarter horse – just a color, not a thing.

 

How that music swarmed like something soft, a breeze of butterflies,

the gentle beginning of a wild, hot sirocco when the dust settles

in layers of new skin over the African coast. Movement happens,

a slight swaying of hips when lovers dance. Music ceases to be a thing,

becomes a force, irresistible under a black moonless sky.

 

The first time I touched color, a strangeness that startled by its

innocence, its simple matter of fact – black – the first time color

touched me, startled by its electricity, by the contrast, innocence,

and the lie – not a thing, just color, the way music is a strand of pearls.

 

 

 

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