All around him, the forest.

	The long, slow bass line of trunk and dirt            moving in tempos beyond human lifetimes.
		Huge notes felt in the genes rather than heard.        Notes in which hidden animals live.
			Above this the mind-made tones and tunes     from limbs repeating                       into distances        and foliage texturing the sky,
				the old favorite that wafts      through the head          when the thought-bows
are drawn across                    perfectly                      tuned         form and color.

No one knows the name of this old anonymous ballad
performed so touchingly by the eyes,
so we just call it Beauty.



                         Is there a human key for this music?

Suddenly the forest pauses and he finds himself        on a bluff where the beat     falls down              down
to the bottom of a gorge.                    His breath catches on the             sharp-edged shift         to geological meter.   Held rock. The hanging             pesante of a dug-in pulse,    a single endless downbeat
that absorbs forest the way forest absorbs him.
			Resonating      in each vertical timbre, the ballad.
		Completely his now.

No one else for miles.
Civilization an old fake,
a botched transcription,
                                               forgotten.

The eon harmony fastened
to him by a single note—

the steady pitch
of his own      fundamental.
Then a gust of cold chords—
	the rest of the day beginning
					to instigate its pent-up cadence.
He moves on.                           Beneath his moving on,              that single long note, still there,           still unwavering,        harmonized now in the key     of gradually realizing.   He’s lost in the woods.
No one else for miles. He could be days away from finding his way     back.
			He could die here.

After embellishing this bare tone with
all the triads and grace notes he has lived,
after making up melody and lyrics and
draping them over the starkly resonating frame,
now finally he has to just listen


and hear it for what it is.