fitting a meteor shower
into a melody—
this love song
Posts Tagged ‘music’
One in Tune
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, music on September 7, 2023| 2 Comments »
Father’s Day, 2021
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father's day, happiness, memory, music on June 18, 2023| 3 Comments »
That was the year our small family
strolled the closed-off streets
in Ridgway and listened
to mariachi and country
and a fabulous upright bass.
And my son was at ease,
my daughter content
my husband smiling.
And I remember thinking,
Remember this.
Two years later, I remember
my joy in the moment
now tethered to me like a shadow.
I remember sun warm on our backs.
I remember even then knowing
happiness doesn’t last.
I remember telling myself,
sweetheart, remember.
And I remember. It’s so beautiful
it hurts. I remember.
In Julie & Carla’s Living Room
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged games, laughter, music, wedding on June 10, 2023| 4 Comments »
The night before they renew their vows,
Julie and Carla sit in matching chairs,
kazoos in hand, playing “Come On, Eileen”
and greatest hits from Fleetwood Mac.
Around them, we play our own kazoos—
“Who Let the Dogs Out” and “Lady Marmalade.”
The night doesn’t care if we can’t
guess each other’s songs.
It cares nothing for wrong or right.
it cares only that we laugh,
that we meet each other
with the hum of warmth, with joy,
that we honor what happens
when two people grow their love
and share it with the world.
For an hour, we hang on each other’s notes.
Long after, we hang on the laughter.
Hearing a Beloved Song Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Kayleen Asbo, music, song on April 1, 2023| Leave a Comment »
for Kayleen
Sometimes after many dawns
a song returns to the heart
and brings with it a new sweetness,
as if in its absence it went to a faraway place
and bathed in turquoise and gold
and rolled in honey and then waded in petals,
as if it has been spending time
amongst ripe fields of wheat
and swimming in the perfume of love.
When a song returns like that,
it finds new ways to sing in us,
and once again our heart becomes
concert hall, resonant, spacious, ringing,
and then it becomes the song.
Sitting in the Driveway with My Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, mother, music, paradox on February 20, 2023| 8 Comments »
You share with me the song
that makes you cry.
Oh strange alchemy
of connection—
as I tune my heart to yours
what at first seemed dark
and moonless
begins to reveal
its tender light.
Though I Don’t Have an Album (Yet)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, dinner, family, music on February 3, 2023| 7 Comments »
Tonight at dinner my daughter and husband
bicker over who will get my plus one ticket
to the Grammys next year. We plan
what we’ll wear to walk the red carpet—
blue for my daughter, no tie for my husband.
I’ll borrow a friend’s green dress and tall boots.
So much to plan already. Where will stay?
Hair down? Rent a car? I wouldn’t want
to meet the moment ill-equipped—
not like this moment in which I am fully prepared
to make an entrance in my slouchy gray sweater
and low, messy bun, prepared to show up
with my short nails and bare face and oud perfume.
I’m so ready for this moment at the dinner table
with its red placemats, homemade mac and cheese,
jazz in the air and quirky conversation.
I don’t even have an album, yet,
and already I know I’m a winner.
When Donavan Plays Classical Guitar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged guitar, heart, music, opening, spaciousness on January 25, 2023| 2 Comments »
for Donavan Dailey
The heart perhaps thought it was open
until a moment of silence is followed by fingers
flying across nylon strings and then, with no warning,
the heart breaks open as a high alpine meadow in June,
splays wide as a snow-deep cirque midwinter,
is exposed as a woman sitting in the first row
with tears spilling down her cheeks.
The heart does not question why,
it simply opens, wider, lets the secret tango
move through its channels as only
a secret tango can do—dancing the heart
ever closer to the moment until, beating wild,
the heart forgets it could ever be anything
but spontaneous as jazz, honest as the man
being played by his guitar, expansive
as the silence that shimmers in the air
just after the last note rings.
Unsolid
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, daughter, music, stone, wind on November 16, 2022| 11 Comments »
After I’ve spent a whole day being stone,
my daughter plays our song on the stereo
and my body is whirlwind, a column of air
spinning round and round, gaining momentum,
and what once was sandstone in me is now dervish,
is dust devil, is momentary phenomenon,
and I barely recall what it’s like to be dense
as I sing and my arms rise and twirl
and I swirl through the room around my girl
thrilling in being this woman on this night,
this spinning delight, this whirling release,
short lived, perhaps, but oh for this twinkling,
I’m windborne, I’m dancing across the horizon
and the wind says, remember, remember this.
Soundtrack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, dark, friendship, light, music on November 12, 2022| 2 Comments »
Sometimes another person knows our heart
so well they offer us a song that becomes,
at least for a moment, our anthem.
In that moment, listening to lyric and melody,
the entire body re-attunes to life,
each cell turning not only toward the music
but also toward the giver,
and we are led deeper into that strange
and beautiful grotto of our heart
with its mosses and echoes,
a place at once strange and familiar,
and the song becomes a shining remover
of darkness, its light bouncing on our inner walls
until we relearn who we are—
the light of a million suns.
Because Last Night I Dreamt of You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, drums, love, music on October 6, 2022| 6 Comments »
This morning I wake and my body
is a concert hall still echoing
the beauty of the night before—
like the morning after the symphony
when the theater walls and
the red velvet curtains still remember
the swell, the strings, the silence
before the applause. Oh,
how I love my body on these mornings.
I linger in the sheets, my eyes closed,
my arms flung over my head,
my belly soft as I open myself to memory.
It’s fleeting, it’s flirty, it’s there,
then it’s not. What was symphonic
is now a mere echo of what was—
as if everyone left, but the drummer
is still there alone on stage,
beating out a tempo, complex,
but true. Hello heart. Hello heart.
Was it really just a dream?
The melody escapes me,
but I swear I still hear the rhythm.