A Sketch For ruth weiss

A Sketch For ruth weiss

By Kimy Martinez

NO, no, no, no. This is NOT my immigrant song, NOT my refugee song I sing.

I am lost, homeless in my own country.

I am the voice not heard today but will be heard tomorrow

by someone I don’t know but recognize.

I, too, am the outcast, the outsider, the maverick.

I am the misguided who will misguide you.

I am the shadowless figure who walks between the shafts of light

Amidst your redwoods, I walk with you, breaking bramble beneath our bare feet.

Into the cave we lay our bodies upon moss furniture,

with mushrooms mounted in crevices of split bark

hypnotizing sketches reaching out from the cold rock walls

to touch our warm skins.

This is when you remember the streets of your youth,

the vibrations of the city’s sidewalks leading you from one destination to the next,

nomadic, jazz gypsy with her late night peers rambling manic passion, prose potion

spewing out of a wine bottle, this, you called “sketching” with a friend,

the possibilities between the breaths, in the breath, it was all about discovery,

finding a new language, raw relations, sound communications, and

only, for that moment to forget you were homeless bound.

Now, we walk again, becoming the broken bramble beneath feet, and

the particles that dance in the golden shafts of sunset.

We stay long enough for the blue fog to carry our voices to

those with shadows, to those who have made in their voices our words

their home.