Caesura

one finger poem would be cool five am air

hot tea cum sweetness, three small brick-red pills

what sights a cat must see out a window into dark

rush of paws across back deck, brush of fur

against damp paint on aging boards, what if we

had a rhythm in our voice as a Greek singer did

not Greek but of this or that city state, X of father Y

when in some other universe it would have been S of

mother T, an epic of reed weaving & small boat

making & lullaby song, of sheep wool dyeing & weaving

instead of ram sacrifice & shield hammering

here the sung rhythm, da da da da da [spondees

followed by the first beat of a dactyl], or 

da duh duh da duh duh da [two & a third dactyls]

even da duh duh da duh duh da duh [two & two thirds]

then the pause, in breath or no breath, the five

or seven or eight followed by what one day

would be punctuation — τρεις δ' 'οι αλλοι εσαν . . .

Ζευς αγαθον τελεσειεν . . . for this scholars invented 

the placing of accents in order to learn to sing

like Homer, the long line of singers before him

was it a visiting Sumerian who wrote it down?