You can reach the innermost self of another by creating from the innermost self in you.
—Ken Paradis
Inside the song you are singing
is another song, the song you
are too timorous to sing. It has a secret
tune that only you know, though
sometimes you forget. No one
has taught the song to you,
and so when you lose the thread
of melody, you struggle to find it again,
and sometimes you find you’ve forgotten
that, too, how to retrieve the melody,
and so you begin to sing louder
some other common tune,
or perhaps you stop singing at all
and notice a widening hollow space
where the song would be.
There is no shame in this.
Silence is as much a part of song
as notes. And eventually
the song will give itself
back to you, will sing its melody
within your inner emptiness,
is more beautiful for the emptiness.
Those first eight lines are especially attractive to my ear, and that word “timorous” — such a perfect word in a perfect place for this poem. Timbre. Tintinnabulation. Oh, I’m too shy to go on…