Stream of Influence
Rainer Maria Rilke stands on a fish and Jim Harrison has his one good eye
aimed at a loon; the other hand on a gun pointing at a bear that looks like Ted Kooser
William Blake cautiously feeds the tiger striding on the ground where
Jack Ridl, on his tip-toes, scoops up a beetle and a nuthatch muttering, “garage door”Billy Collins watches them all from behind an oak tree; drawing slow short
tokes on his cigarette, patting his dog, calmly suggesting “jazz” might
be the answer and anyhow-now-the retort of e.e. cummings is dryly,
“Spring!” and he being brand new smooth-zoomingly exits in his
am
bu lance to
play
the;
bon gos withRichard Feynman who’s wondering if uncooked spaghetti
breaks in a predictable pattern to which William Stafford replies,
“Ask the flea in the Mountain.” upon which
Isaac Newton sets his fluxion-canon firingwith just enough impetus and report! to wake
Charles Simic from a black-and-white hangover
to put the clothes on the girl he met after
the Keith Jarrett concert as she [the night before]parted from Robert Frost’s hair and boots hearing, actually, the song of
Carl Sandburg on a thin minimally travelled road seeking
solitude with another – despite the raining of hyacinths and biscuits --
somewhere behind Aldo Leopold’s cabin where tonighta concert is about to begin
sometime between the past, eternity, and now
Salvador Dali squints at the program noticing:Summer Concert Series #4: The Meeting of Bach, Dmitri Shostakovich and Led Zeppelin
violin: Albert Einstein
trumpet: Miles Davis
guitar: Carlos Montoya
bass: Edvard Grieg
drums: Stevie Wonder
piano: Herbie Hancock
vocals: Beastie Boys
Written and arranged by: Loren Eiseley
Conducted by: Captain AmericaIn the audience Woody Allen leans into a joke about sex and death to an
unimpressed R.J. Oppenheimer who doesn’t even remove his pipe to
mutter in Sanskrit, “Love and death aren’t covariant – but music is light.”
behind him the Rabi Edwin Friedman is scribbling geneogramic trianglesfor
Neil Postman who folds up his program, shoves it in his suit pocket and
harshly comments: “Wisdom?”