Memory's Kaleidoscope from Makings by Jesse Olsen Bay

The kaleidoscope, the twists and turns
The shapes and forms, reflected
The colors swirl, reveal, conceal
Memory’s mists are rising

What comes to the surface?
What remains, what never leaves?
What accidental wind blows the memory’s fragile seeds?
One blows to the rock, one blows into the sea
One finds deep and fertile earth, and grows into a tree

The breast less girl, forever young, under the Catalpa
The new ploughed fields, the black, stitched earth
I stretch my chest against it

The alleyways, the empty lots, the thunders in the night
The shirtwaists, and the clothes hanging dejected on the line
The moanings of the city dogs, the raven’s hacking caw
The smell of burning paper as we leave for Omaha

The Kansas coat, damp to the bone. Winter, 1930
Little one, the money’s gone. Hard times are coming
The nights I held them in my arms and gentled them to sleep
While songs of tangled searching twined through nerve and bone of me
The years move on, the ghosts awake, arise, and ask for life
The dusk is always falling and the evening always nigh
The dust is always restless and the wind is always high

• Experimental
• ambient
• folk
• lo-fi
• pop
• Montague