Melissa Guillet

Book of Life

The street player sounds sweet notes,
Wisdom in the saxophone’s spine
While he is passed by fools
Who toss coins in the instrument’s cover.

They do not see his face;
His uncut hair is sacred.
He leans resolutely over the cliff
Of the sidewalk, venturing

Into DeChirico’ empty
Streets, shadows looming off-page
As a reminder of all that is binding:
Bills, Jobs, Family, Career. Red

Handed, they steal glimpses of the sacred,
Guiltily paying the pauper paper notes
For what they need but dare not face:
Freedom from the crook in their spines,

Daydreaming of an undercover
Life like Walter Mitty fools.
The street player is misread,
Pitied by lemmings racing the cliff,

Diving into 9 to 5 binding,
Numb and longing for adventure,
Filling page after page after page
In their planner and feeling empty.

Some think the musician the fool
For staying in the rain, living sacredly,
Each day unexpected discoveries
Guided by chance like notes

Caught in the wind’s spine,
In a thousand raindrop faces.
His pockets are empty,
Unprepared but unafraid of unread

Passages flipping by like pages,
Too much ahead to mind the cliff,
The line in the sand daring to venture
Past all doubt and caution that binds.

He laughs in the face
Of dangerous fools
Who will split his spine
Looking for relics or sacred

Souvenirs, Cliff notes
In which to take cover.
He will risk being bound,
Being hungry, being empty.

Distant hooves sound new ventures,
Warning waiting to be read.
His ear to the edge of the cliff,
He listens for the Page

While they run for cover,
Make masks of their faces,
Waiting for ransom notes.
He is his own fool,

Heeding the counsel of sacred
Clouds and crosswalk spines,
And the message of the Page
of Cups, getting out of binds

Through intuition, cliff
Hanging, skydiving in empty
Air on winged shoes, reading
Mercury’s sun-crossed venture.

The picket fence spines
Are merely a wall to cover
All that they massacred
To mask their true faces,

To not seem the fool
While they check cheat notes.
They miss the butterfly adventure:
No set course, just one winged page

After another, lived and read
In a simultaneous bind
Until the book is empty,
And buried is the cliff.

Don’t be fooled by the cover; bend back the binding,
Note the open spine, read the pages, discover
The surface of words. Sacred and empty, venture off the cliff.