In the Key of Your Hour
The words I sing are draped in silence,
wedged between notes yet flowing forward.
Stop-time presents the illusion of interrupted tempo and meter.
Perception informs our spirits.
The old guitar hangs on the wall and seldom speaks,
preferring instead to lightly hum when the wind blows just so.
The conceit of two right hands. A slamming door.
Music enters my room by subterfuge, but exits boldly.
If simultaneity is relative, how do we assign primacy
to an overtone? One voice, one whole.
We must respond to our bodies. In kind, with trust.
I ask you to listen without considering the requisite commitment.
The broken circle represents common time replete with imperfections,
linking the measurable to the internal well.
Gather what comes, no matter the source.
Mark time and repeat: harmonics, the quivering string. Breath.
“In the Key of Your Hour” appeared here in September 2016, and is also in my chapbook-length work, The Circumference of Other, which is included in IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks, published by Silver Birch Press in 2015.
O at the Edges 
I am struck especially here by the care you take with your titles, Bob — how they reflect and round out your poems. Another beauty.
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Thanks, Cate. I love composing titles, as I believe they should carry part of the poem’s burden. This one was interesting, in that I originally started out with a title, something like “In the Tender Guitar of Your Shadow,” wrote the poem, then realized the poem didn’t fit the title. This happens quite often. 🙂
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Nice poem!
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Thank you, Maurice. Much appreciated.
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Your welcome
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Beautiful poem!
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Thanks very much, Phyllis!
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Your welcome indeed. It was my pleasure to read.
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I love the image of the guitar hanging on the wall seldom speaking and humming now and then as breezes blow through just right!
dwight
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Thanks, Dwight. An image from life…
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I understand!
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The picture is perfect for these tenderest of words.
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Thank you, Nancilynn.
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This felt like it needed to be read out aloud, so I did. And it flowed beautifully.
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The highest compliment. Thank you!
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Beautifully done. I see it as an essay on trust. (I don’t usually entitle my posts until they are finished)
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Thanks, Derrick. My poems are usually titled “New Poem,” until I figure out what the heck I’m writing about. But occasionally a title will come to me and I’ll riff off of it.
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There is so much here in both the simplicity and complexity of your poem! Like the open mechanism of the clock, Time is inexorably linked to the meter of our songs. So well done, Robert!
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Thank you, sir! Much appreciated.
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I too have a guitar – conceit of two left hands – which looks better when silent and left alone to tune itself
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Sometimes I think my guitar prefers the wind to me.
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