for Kyra
In a corrugated metal culvert, tall enough
to walk in, Kyra made us a nest of warm blankets.
We entered the steel tube from the same side
the flash floods enter each fall, and we curled
into the softness she’d prepared. Meanwhile,
she settled on a stool and began to bow her cello,
a Brahms lullaby meant to lull and soothe.
Above us, cars hummed along on the highway.
Beside us, daylight glowed from both round ends.
Inside me, what was broken was still so deeply broken,
but I felt, too, the gentling that arrives with surprise
beauty. There are times someone tends to our hearts
with such warmth, such goodness, our hearts
cannot help but bloom. Even when the heart soil is barren.
Even when there’s no chance for rain. Even in the midst
of breaking—there, just at the edge of perception—
the heart a wildflower in spring. It is simple kindness
that grows us, the kind she brings with her everywhere.
Even now, I can see her swaying as she played,
her body a radiant pendulum draped in red velvet.
Even now, I hear the long, sonorous notes of her song.
Even now, I think of her smile, humble and shy, and
how that moment still reverberates—her cello, our sighs,
the laughter that somehow finds its way to our lips
in the saddest of times. Years later, her kindness still echoes.
Posts Tagged ‘music’
In a Difficult Time, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brahms, concert, kindness, Kyra Kopestonksky, music on December 23, 2025| 6 Comments »
Remembering Rose
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, dancing, grandmother, music on December 17, 2025| 8 Comments »
I remember her waltzing across the living room
singing, Somewhere my love, dah dah dah, dah,
dah dah. She was dancing alone, as she often did,
but oh, could she waltz, small feet like wings, her thin
body gliding past tables and chairs, weaving, spinning,
her arms lifted up in the air around a loving partner
who had never been there. I don’t think
she knew the rest of the words, or at least
she didn’t sing them. Always Somewhere
my love, again and again, like a promise
she wanted to believe in. She danced
like that through my childhood. Perhaps
dancing itself was her love. I can see her now
box stepping, one, two, three, one two three,
each step a step closer to all she did not have.
Fräulein
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, music, singing, song on August 20, 2025| 4 Comments »
Just because it’s a song about a man leaving a woman
and realizing he still loves her doesn’t mean
it isn’t also a song about a mother and a daughter
singing their hearts out in a car, both of us
falling in love with what the human voice can do
and what a song can do when two people choose
to sing it together, over and over, until it becomes
our anthem, until it becomes the glue in something
larger than we are, something less about the words
and more about the transmission of love,
the shared moments in which we come together
to sing it, you on the melody with Tyler Childers,
me on the harmony with Colter Wall. And the more
we sing it, the more I’m in love not just with the song,
but with you, because no matter what the song is about,
it’s our song, and we choose to sing it again and again,
because joy, because the way two voices come together
as one, even out of tune, because, Fräulein, this song is ours.
You belong to this world with
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, bluegrass, fire, music, wildfire on July 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »
its early morning thunderstorm
that wakes you with a clap,
this world of early morning rain
and dusty midday paths,
this world with plumes of wildfire
that fill the air by evening,
the valleys thickly choked with smoke,
the mountains disappearing.
You belong to this world of tinder.
Sometimes it hurts to belong.
You belong to the burning world of fear
as much as the world of song.
You most surely belong to music,
to this world of euphoric dancing
And as you dance, you smile,
dance as if it’s your calling.
They sing of constant sorrow.
You dance. The ash keeps falling.
In Harsh Times
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desert, hope, music, seed, song, transformation on July 4, 2025| 11 Comments »
I know, music alone
will not save us. But tonight
when my daughter played
the song we both love,
we smiled at each other,
all giddy and warm,
and some shriveled
part of me revived.
It was like those seeds
in the desert that wait years
to germinate—all they need
is one good rain.
That’s what a song can do.
Remind us our hope
is merely dormant, not dead.
Who could blame me, then,
for wanting to bring a song
to the whole thirsty world,
a song that soaks into
our parched hearts,
stunning us with just how fast
even the harshest world
can transform.
A Letter Sent Back in Time to Schumann
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged music, Schumann on June 29, 2025| 10 Comments »
I wish you could have heard it, Robert,
your Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major played
tonight in a home in the San Juan Mountains.
I know you heard it many times—heck,
played by Clara and by Mendelssohn—
but I think you would have loved it tonight,
the way the cello resonated through the old
wood floor and into the soles of my feet,
the way my husband smiled through
the whole scherzo, the way birdsong
filled the silences between each movement,
the way the whole evening was cradled
by the scent of evergreens and the low pink glow
of the sun. It was exuberant, Robert, the kind of ecstatic
beauty so desperately needed now when humans
turn against each other so quickly.
We need something “splendid, full of vigor
and freshness” just as much as you must have
back in 1842. I wish you could have seen it,
the way the audience rose to our feet,
thrilled by the music, the musicians, the night.
I wish you could have heard it, the applause,
the ovation. I wish you could read this letter
while you’re in the sanatorium, wondering
what it was all for. What do any of us know
of sanity? You wouldn’t believe what the world
is like now. But I know, Robert, one way to deal
with the ache of the world is with beauty, and friend,
it’s still happening, the craziness and
the drive to find hope in music. It’s still
happening, your music in rooms small and grand.
It’s still happening, the agony, the love.
For Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged contentment, daughter, happily ever after, happiness, love, mother, movie, music, story on June 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Driving home from the movie,
our blood still charged with adrenaline,
my daughter and I move through
the dark just under the speed limit,
our eyes trained on the red taillights
in front of us, and we talk about plot holes
and how we would change the ending.
Neither of us would have chosen happily
ever after, which somehow felt false
to the greater story. It’s not long before
we’re singing along to her favorite song.
I harmonize on the chorus, and
a “Peaceful Easy Feeling” grows in me
as we drive through pouring rain.
I may not believe in happily ever after,
but I do believe in content for now,
as in this moment when she reaches
for my hand and I slide mine into hers.
I can’t see her face in the dark, but
in her voice, I can hear it, her smile.
In Second Grade
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, commerce, money, mother, music, work on March 30, 2025| 2 Comments »
I wanted that plastic recorder.
Wanted it so much that when mom
suggested I could earn that two dollars
by defrosting the freezer, I sat
on the black-and-white tiled kitchen floor
with a blow drier on high. For hours.
Sat there watching each drip.
Sat there longer, perhaps,
than the cumulative time I played
my recorder, but I tell you,
I cherished that brown plastic tube.
Every “Hot Cross Buns” I played
was an anthem to self-determination.
Almost fifty years later I don’t remember
what I read yesterday, but I remember
one a penny, two a penny.
I remember the drip, drip, drip of the frost.
I remember my mom saying,
No, not yet. Keep going.
I remember my lips on the mouthpiece,
the flesh of my fingertips
pressed on the holes,
the shrill music filling the kitchen.
One Evening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cello, contentment, music on March 20, 2025| 4 Comments »
listening to cello
the smile of wanting
nothing but this
Stage 4
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cancer, honesty, Kyra Kopestonksky, music, surrender on January 29, 2025| 6 Comments »
for K
Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. J. Macy and A. Barrows, “Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29”
Oh friend, as life batters you,
again, you make music—
not the music you’ve practiced,
not the gentle strains of hope
you longed to share,
but a naked ringing.
Oh, how you teach me.
There is so much goodness
in fear when it is shared truly—
not the innocence of a lullaby,
but the brutal shine of a gong.
How essential and urgent it is,
your song, my bell.
You change my ideas of what
it means to be strong—
not that we don’t get battered,
but that we let ourselves feel
and meet such moments
unrelentingly, beautifully real.