Making a Meal of Receding Footsteps

by Stephen Petroff

Making a Meal of Receding Footsteps
(Zoom–Orphic Lyrics)

“. . . barring cogent reasons, a scholar is never without his lute.”
— Li-Ki (Book of Rites)
(Source: Achilles Fang)

This summer, we’ve had
odd reports from the coastal towns:
a lioness is swimming from island to island.
Schools of inkfish have been coloring the coves.
Fig trees have sprouted on the ledges.
On every hot day, our fishermen have been hauling
from the water, in their traps and nets, music that
was popular a century ago.
Where people live down by the sea, there are always
ghost stories of this sort being told.  Each evening,
a fox stands in front of a white lilac that grows
by the door of a cottage near the shore, calling a
woman’s name.
As a scholar of these studies, when I listen
to the old ballads, I know that the first people
who sang them were living just as I do,
brilliantly careworn.
I held in my hand
an old Greek coin, so badly used by Time,
that the image of a lyre on its face
had nearly vanished.  It was there only if
you knew it was there.