movement 11 from FEATHERMUCKER by Ted Moore featuring The Dream Songs Project with text by Timothy Otte

FEATHERMUCKER (Plume)
(text not sung)

You said, There’s a plume in the dirt,
under asphalt, mingled with the infrastructure.
I heard, bloom, and thought a field,

goldenrod and fireweed underground,
forgotten. I heard feather, convinced
you’d carved a quill and buried it. You said again,

A plume, and I heard toxic, but couldn’t
understand how it moved, how it got here.
You said, Try thinking of it as a glacier,

cutting a path through the dirt and bedrock,
Passing through mantle, crust, pooling in low places.

The creature

found its way to the bluffs and through limestone,
burst into the air above the river and screamed
like a pained demon, crashing into the water.

There was no splash and hardly a disturbance
in the air. How stunted and sick, that feathered
thing. It did not move the hearts of my neighbors.

It evoked no pity from me. It sullied the waters
out of spite as it died. I expect it to be reborn,
monstrous phoenix in a fallow field.

• Experimental
• Chicago