Tuning Fork
--Bruce Bond 

Lynchpin of the singing wheel,
..........you with the silver of your call
..........so tiny and, yes, unmusical 

at times, your shiny monotone
..........a mere shiver down the spine
..........of the steel, the nerve, the wine 

glass so quick to speak, to startle
..........at your touch, its hollow bell
..........overflowing with the chill 

that silence drinks. As does the shape
..........of seasoned violins who sleep
..........beside you in their cases, who slip 

at night from some determined pitch
..........and form of things. True, we call it,
..........as in true north, winter's pivot 

we steer below, that we balance
..........in the heaven of our compass.
..........True, the way the rifle in us 

aims to see, to make true the cross
..........that sees. True, as in the thrust
..........of birth, or death, the things we trust 

to be there when we draw the curtain.
..........Is there nothing under the sun
..........more sure, more fragile than your song? 

Of all the birds most like the hummingbird.
..........You who hover with the speed
..........of the atom, the blur of being 

here alive. It's what you hear
..........passed as one symphonic rumor
..........from string to string, ear to ear, 

through the sea of all the sour
..........fiddling, our uncertain water
..........from which a music crawls ashore. 

Straight as light itself—the sound
..........you make—as the shaft we send
..........flying from the bow of sight. 

Not much of a song really.
..........Not yet. More of a tune we bury
..........in bodies of the tunes we play, 

a perfect thing (and so not
..........a thing at all) our one clear note
..........deep inside the humming planet.