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Posts Tagged ‘music’

Stage 4

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.
 

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One Listening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on December 4, 2024| 3 Comments »

                  —for e.s.r.
 
 
I slip inside her voice
as if into the clearest spring—
even my heartache is sparkling

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One Driving to the Airport at 4 a.m.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 9, 2024| 2 Comments »



the empty highway
stretches through the dark—
a music staff with one long note

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The Night the Piano Fell Apart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 23, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
listening to Trio Duende play Allegro con Brio, from Piano Trio 1 in B Major
 
 
Once, on a rainy night, I sat in the home
of a family I did not know and listened
to a trio playing Brahms. Though
it is only hours later, I unwrap
the memory as if it is tied with silk ribbons
and wrapped in gold tissue—something
precious as a time-smoothed stone
on the banks of a slender river. Unlike
a museum piece, this memory wants
to be opened, to be held, to be touched,
to be cradled by bare hands. Wants
my finger prints all over it—
the memory of how beauty swells in us
 
and then breaks us, breaks us
the way the piano itself broke apart tonight—
the pedal rods clattering to the ground
mid-movement. Beauty bids us play on
as the pianist did tonight. Play on.
Though broken. Though we know
the work eventually ends in a minor key.
Play on, as if we trust the line of beauty
will not be broken. No matter how intense
it gets. Even if the world explodes.

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Hallelujah

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 18, 2024| 3 Comments »


 
 
after singing in the stadium
with fifty thousand other voices
emerging into the night
to find my own ecstatic
silence

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While Hiking on Lizard Head Pass

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2024| 15 Comments »


 
I forgot, today, to be sad.
Perhaps, more truly,
the song of the hermit thrush
ringing through the alpine meadow
gathered me into its echoing
and lifted me out of myself
and landed me fully in the field
where the green corn lilies
reached up to my waist.
While listening to the thrush,
I forgot how things fall apart,
held as I was by the long
whistled song, haunting and rich,
flute-like and clear as it pealed
through the spruce, honest
as any church bell, urgent
as a gong, holy as a woman
set free by a song.

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There Is This Moment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 20, 2024| 12 Comments »


 
 
with the full moon rising
and a large bird of prey
gliding spirals in the sky
and my husband on my right
my sweet friend on my left
and the two-person band
transforming sorrow into joy
just by singing it in harmony
and giving the song their everything,
and maybe that’s what is ours to do—
to give ourselves wholly to a moment
as if we are the singers and life the song,
so I give myself to the low summer sun
and the dust on my feet,
to the pucker of lime
and the tears of my friend,
give myself to the ache that never leaves
and the relentless beauty that ever arrives,
and the more I give myself to the world,
the more the world rushes in
and says home, home, home,
you are home.
 

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Ready for It

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 1, 2024| 7 Comments »

 
“Mom, what’s the title of this song,”
she asks me. I listen to the lyrics
for cues. Luckily, Taylor Swift starts to croon
in her mezzo voice, part velvet, part thorn,
“You’re on Your Own Kid.” And I shout
out the title. Vivian smirks,
knowing I was rescued by the song.
“Album?” she says. “Red?” I guess.
“Wrong,” she says. “Evermore?”
I guess. “Wrong.” “Midnights?”  “Yes.”
She nods in mock exasperation
it took me so long.
She loves it when I get it wrong
in her endless quiz of popular songs.
She loves that she can teach me.
I love it, too, that she shares with me
these lyrics that grow her, shape her.
We walk along the river trail,
one white air pod in her ear,
one white air pod in mine
and the river braids by and the next song
begins to play. “Title?” she asks,
and I listen for clues until Taylor
demands in a gravelly rush
“Are You Ready for It?” And I look
at my daughter, just fifteen
and becoming so wholly herself.
As much as I want to stop
in this moment with her hand brushing mine
and the musky scent of river
and sunshine warm on our skin
and I think yeah, I’m ready for it,
though it brings me to tears, yes I am.

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What the Tuner of Souls Knows

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 5, 2024| 5 Comments »


 
 
The quiet is best. Then
one might hear what is
strung too loose, too tight,
how the voicing is not
quite right. Not so long ago,
the tuner brought
this same instrument back
to true. But there is no failure.
that the instrument
went out of tune.
That’s is simply
what instruments do—
go sharp, go flat,
they waver until
once again the temperament
is set and then
song is what a life does—
we feel it the change
in every note—
oh the bliss of being in tune
with ourselves and
with every other instrument.
Then no matter how old
we are, we are new.

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One Listening to Dvorak

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »


 
with such fierce tenderness
the bow urges strains from the cello
like that, love, play me

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