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Posts Tagged ‘harmony’

Noel, Noel

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 26, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
for Diane
 
Though my fingers fumble through
the joyful and triumphant chords,
though the notes are too high
for me to sing without stridence,
and though Diane’s alto is no longer
steady as it was over twenty years
ago when we began this Christmas ritual,
still we snuggle side by side
on the black lacquer bench
and harmonize through the deep
and dreamless sleep and the child
who shivers in the cold, we sing
of hopes and fears of all the years
and though we are clumsy and stilting
and downright not good, we are singing
through the darkest part of the year,
through this tender time for us all.
The light of an ancient star shines inside us.
And as we stumble, we laugh and
sing that light back to the world.
 

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While Singing “Parting Glass”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 6, 2024| 10 Comments »


                  for D
 
I spent years
practicing how
to make my voice
disappear
inside hers
so we’d blend—
and though
it’s been a year
since we sang,
it’s only weeks
since she’s gone,
and how strange now
to open my mouth,
to listen for her,
to hear only
myself. And I
can’t stop singing
because it makes
me feel closer
to her to hear
where her voice
would be,
almost like
silence
is now harmony.

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After the Long Silence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 11, 2024| 14 Comments »

harmony opens in me
the doors of forgiveness,
just a sliver—
then it dissolves
the idea of a door

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Relative Key

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 15, 2022| 9 Comments »


 
 
I paid extra for the bell
with a beautiful sound,
knowing we would ring it
one hundred and eight times
on the anniversary of your death.
I wanted it to be beautiful.
I wanted to play a sound
that would reach
to wherever you are
and offer you peace.
There are bells that ring
danger or failure or shame,
bells that clang with dissonance,
bells that toll only melancholy.
I have heard those bells.
But for you, my boy,
the bell we rang for you
pealed with a brilliant, shining ring,
a rousing chiming,
a surprising harmony
that opened the evening
with new light,
a ringing that rhymed
with new colors I’ve found in my heart—
the shimmering blue of enduring hope,
the glimmering gold of companioning.
I could still hear the blue
and the resonant gold
long after the bell stopped ringing.
 

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Harmony

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 23, 2022| 8 Comments »




Surrounded by steep cliffs
and great open sky,
we stand on the point
and sing—not for money,
not for fame, not even
for the crow that hovers
above us on the wind—
we sing for joy, sing because
in that moment when
eight of us sing there is
one voice among us, one mind,
one invitation to move alone together
through the door of the moment
and know that as much as we
are entirely ourselves,
we are one, oh my god,
we are one.

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By Example

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 6, 2021| 3 Comments »


for Ulli, Happy Birthday!


I love harmony, she says as she claps
and laughs and settles in her chair
in the sun. And I think of all the times
we have sung, have sung in harmony—
in stairwells and forests, on stages
and in living rooms, standing
in the current of the Gunnison River
and sitting on the back stoop of the farm,
our voices soaring on different paths together—
like two notes holding hands as they move
together through time.
I have come to trust her voice below
as I sing in some interval above.
I have come to trust what voices do
is a metaphor for love. I have come
to trust that dissonance can always
be resolved. I have come to trust
that harmony is the soundtrack of the soul.
And so we sing. We sing again—
sing in the sun, in the rain.
And though we sing of loss, though we sing
of great change, though we sing
of goodbyes and breaking chains,
the harmony offers its beauty to everything,
and so in this uncertain world
she finds and shares harmony
and we sing and we sing and we sing.

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Conversing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 5, 2013| 2 Comments »

for Wendy Videlock

impossibly sweet
two notes played at once
on one flute

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