it was dark and also late and I was awake so I listened
to the scott tuma album on digitalis and then I let it be
quiet for a while; but after that I wanted
to hear more music, more something like that
and so I played the song ringside suite
the last thing we've heard so far by souled american.

there isn't any band I feel about the way I feel about
them; there isn't any time in the world
quite like time alone in a dark or lit room
or a half-dark room or a lit one
spent listening to them, to this; they sound like some things
that they heard once,
and then heard again many times over,

but it's fair also to say
that there's never really been anyone like them.
they have chosen near-silence
as goal and grail
both within their practice
and as part of it;
the last song they shared with the world
was ringside suite

that was four or five years ago
it was one of two songs they've released
since 1997
I choose the word released
for lack of a better one.

I listened to ringside suite and it summoned
the vague and wondrous glory of its title
slow waltzing salute to images hard with grain,
living images, live things;
and I thought about the last plane to jakarta
leaving the airstrip in the cooled cobalt blue
of some night local to somewhere,
God knows where and isn't saying

and I looked down at the ocean through the window of that plane
whose engines run sometimes loud and sometimes silent

and I thought
I don't do this very often any more
but this, this song, this view from this window, this
is why
I do
this.