Chords

On a long day’s journey
south to Cartagena
on lonely hills
and empty roads
and sheets of autumn rain
I thought about your hands
the ones you fear
look just like a man’s.

Do you know that in
my eyes your hands are
wings and lips and
often flames and
sometimes roots
ten white stalks that
burrow through the sleeping
earth in search of light?

All through the night black
winds hissed against the
window near my bed.
In the clear blue light of
morning I woke
from dreams
of thorns and snow
to see red blooms

outside the window, to
hear the songs of birds
in the throats of blossoms
and feel the petals tumble
from my own mouth
like prayers
into your hands.

© J. M. Keating 2026

• • *

More thoughts and images at:

☛ My website JohnMichaelKeating.com (link in bio)
☛ My book Double Vision, Waking Dreams (see website)

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Imagine:
You are hiking alone in the Rocky mountains near the border with Canada. It’s Autumn and the days are still warm and green. Forests open into vast canyons where the hoots of marmots echo above the trees. In the darkness before sleep, in the embrace of your own home planet, you gaze up at the wheel of the Milky Way.

Deer and mountain goats live here with you. Grizzly bears too. To warn them of your presence you occasionally play a bit of “Wildwood Flower” on your harmonica as loud as you can. Here in the wild, you come to a road. Parked right in the middle of the road is an old Chevrolet sedan, all four doors wide open, not a soul in sight. You pause, shrug, play a few bars on the harmonica and stride into the trees on the other side of the road.

Four braves sit in a clearing, sharing a smoke. “We knew you would show up. We heard your mouth harp aways away. Don’t worry, we’re not grizzlies.”

You sit with them for awhile. “Do you guys live here?” They laugh. “We live on the rez. Our folks only come up here to the mountains to pray.”

We talk about the names of things. “You know the lake on the West side of Glacier, McDonald Lake? The white folks named it after some pioneer. Or after a hamburger.” We all laugh.

“What did your folks call it?”

“Sacred Dancing Lake.”

A friend told me this story the last time I was in Montana, many autumns ago. I remembered it when driving back home from a recent book signing in Oregon. A magnificent snow-peaked mountain named Shasta welcomed me. Above it, wheel-shaped clouds, named “lenticular” clouds, spiraled, inverted cones of energy. I named the vision “Sacred Dancing Mountains.”

After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly form the left my
moon rising slowly form the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Sharon Olds, for your lovely poem.