The New Poetry Project: "Songlines"

When the planes crashed,
when the levees broke,
when the ground shook,
there was a song I dreamed of,
humming subsonic,
a chorus of voices and prayers
uncorked like the little brown jug
that holds all the love and memories.

In the outback, Aborigines believe
we create the world by our actions,
that our past and futures are connected
in Dreamtime, in songlines.
Your story and my story intersect
on a long, thin line of sound and vision,
every story.

Some great godhead speaks
in one voice, but after creation
he disappears into The Dreaming –
call him Mura-mura, Muhammad,
Buddha or Christ.
We are charged to pick up the trail,
find the spirit, the sacredness of the earth.

We live in a world of noise,
the human symphony drowning us out,
until we are drawn together in crisis.
When the troubles come, when resistance
will be necessary, raise your aerials,
pull the songlines out of the air,
so that our collective voices
find the melody again.
So we are forever singing the world
into existence and out of darkness.


This poem is the fifth of eight new works that will appear at Modern Confessional and across social media until the end of the year. Read the other poems: The Masquerade, Acid Flashback #2,  Things to do in Denver when you'd rather be dead and 1989. Find out more about the New Poetry Project at this link. ©Collin Kelley, 2016