The violinists pick up sea tides,
play the salt with cadmium and
traces of silver, golden sunfalls
on fingers shaking out a vibrato
of breezes under the screaming
sea gulls.

Always someone stands in truth
by accident of ability to confront,
whose hands and underhands
weave the cliffs and silt-choked
flood plains. A pink shade of dew
forms in the rising sun.

No one sleeps forever, some
of us bring the fallen city on a
stretcher, pour hot drinks
of molten steel and coal until it
coughs up bridges and concert
halls. We go to hear exit points
in the fingers of musicians.

Unicorns graze during the slow
movement, and in the fire-dance,
fast days flash by, months of true
ripening grapes, wine fermenting,
history forming like rings on trees.
Then we see where we must go
if we want our hands on the source
point of light.
      from Ascent from Cleveland: Wild Heart/Steel Phoenix Copyright c 2008 by Russell Salamon, published by Freedonia Press, an imprint
of Bottom Dog Press, P.O. Box 425 / Huron, Ohio 44839.

RUSSELL SALAMON
Russell Salamon wonders what he was doing before he made a left turn into infinity. Now that he is stranded, he writes poems which try to dig up traces of our spiritual origins. In the Sixties in Cleveland with d.a.levy they worked on finding the footprints of the Void. The news is good, the Void is not empty, it is full of life: Us. We write things to keep universes flowing between us.