Andrew Vogel

Equinox Winds

remembering Pharoah Sanders (1940-2022)

Equinox winds lift voices in the street
and shiver me awake in green darkness.

You’re an hour gone already, I can only turn from
my own thin warmth and set my own day going.  

They sift through our trash, strew it up the alley,
bother the window glass, test every hasp. 

They stir ideas in drowsing bells, whip the cemetery
crows into hysterics. Love is everywhere, they sing. 

Every day an end beginning, textured routine.
Every little thing takes longer than we would think, 

while sugared coffee rusts on our talking tongues,
and the winds, relentless, flail through the day, 

wobbling street light and tree blossom until
you and I can finally meet in a gleaming lobby. 

The auditorium domes a crowd of inhibitions.
Gah, the gibberish, the stage fatigue peers into, 

a melody in reverb, all, all we need, a tenor
to twine breath, to blow out all our deflections, 

the crowded hall throwing in, listening to once
and for all, the house lights falling, Pharoah in blue 

shadow, my now white bristle underlip tucking in
and brushing, with a whisper, the catch of your ear.

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Andrew Vogel listens, walks the hills, and teaches in rural eastern Pennsylvania, homelands of the displaced Lenape peoples. His poems have appeared most recently in Poetry East, Hunger Mountain, Crab Creek Review, The Briar Cliff Review, The North Dakota Quarterly and Cider Press Review.