(for my father)

What came before
the music
was not the binge,
the crook
the bend
but the ebony stick
gently arched,
bowed, naming itself;
then the horsehairs pooled
from a slaughterhouse,
hanks of white
gathered for their strength
to cross the cello's belly—
over the spruce ribs of it which
hold the creature in place,
my thighs around its hollowed
hourglass, its wooden heart—
my calloused fingers
bearing down on its long lunged neck
seeking a pulse.

And for this a horse
unraveled its parts
for my body now
caught between living
and not living,
which when bowing down
makes a sound
like an audible fall to earth,
one curvant bundle of the holy.

Lured and received.