Elevator Music by Henry Taylor

A tune with no more substance than the air,
perfomred a unedmater instruments,
is proper to this shortlift from the earth.
It hovers as we draw into ourselves.
and turn our reverent eyes toward the light.
that doesn't count us to our various destinies..
we're all in this together, the song says,
and later we'll descend. The melody
Is like a name we don't recall just now
that still keeps on insisting it is there.

Henry Taylor was thew winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
He has received the Wittner Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy.
Taylor has also been elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
He currently teaches and directs at American University in Washington, DC. in the creative writting program.