for Heartbeat, singing together since 1994
Every week we sang, sang blues
and ballads, folk songs,
rounds, pop songs, jazz,
love songs, chants. And we
didn’t just sing, we touched
and hugged, leaned in and loved,
ran our fingers through the waves
of each other’s hair, laughed till we peed,
and jostled and shoved and teased
and offered tissues and kissed cheeks
and brought the shared melodic air
into our bodies and returned it
into the room in currents of ecstatic song.
Oh we sang, how we sang, as if
singing were a life raft that kept us afloat
on the aching broken world.
Now, I sing alone in the kitchen.
Sometimes I’m haunted by the part
I sing—a harmony line unanchored
by the melody. With no tonic,
the tune feels off. There is so much
that’s missing, that’s lost.
Sometimes I make up a new song
and sing about what is here.
Good morning, hummingbird.
Good morning, loneliness. Good
morning big empty room.
The air holds the notes like shimmering drops
that sometimes leak out of my eyes
when I think of how we sang, the music
a life raft, and your voices, my friends, the oars.
Posts Tagged ‘singing’
Over a Year Later, I Grieve
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, friendship, Heartbeat, loss, singing on May 13, 2021| 2 Comments »
The Tide is High
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Blondie, buoyancy, music, ocean, salt, singing on April 4, 2021| 8 Comments »
lyrics from "The Tide Is High" by John Holt, 1967
Something about the unsinkable reggae beat,
and in just three notes, I’m again my young self,
dancing alone in my bedroom,
singing as if I am one with the song,
as if it were written just for me,
I’m not the kind of girl
who gives up just like that, oh no, oh!
And singing it now on a Sunday afternoon,
I’m caught in a surprise riptide of joy
and start to lilt around the room,
though just moments ago I was weeping,
buried beneath the salt of worry,
but here I am, dancing alone,
hips rocking, my shoulders a rolling sea,
my voice surfing above the bright swell of trumpets.
The tide is high but I’m holding on.
Sometimes a song is a lifeline,
not because it pulls me out of the water,
but because it tosses me deeper in,
and I feel I’m no longer trapping myself
in a life the size of a teacup—
no, in this moment I am oceanic,
an Atlantic of joy, a Pacific of wonder
vast enough to hold everything,
and the tide is high
and all that salt only makes me more buoyant
as I play in the generous waves.
On a Night When the World Seems Doomed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged doom, Heartbeat, lucky to be alive, singing on August 10, 2020| 3 Comments »
for Heartbeat
If I said we sat in a circle
in an open air room made of stones
with tall arched windows
and night sky for a dome
and drank wine and laughed
and teased and wept,
if I said we then sang by candlelight
until the milky way
spilled into our throats
and our voices swirled like vines
that twine and tendril to climb themselves,
if I said how, when we sang our last song,
the wind rustled in the aspen
in quiet applause and then stilled
and a shooting star unspooled
its bright fleeting ribbon, well,
I would barely believe it myself
that the world could feel so full of beauty,
except I was there and felt
the night as it cradled us,
felt that vine take root, still taste
just a bit of that milky way in my thoughts
creamy, nourishing, vast.
In a Circle Six Feet Apart in Town Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, Heartbeat, joy, music, singing, tears on May 26, 2020| 4 Comments »
Perhaps we stumbled
on the words, perhaps
we forgot a note,
forgot a bridge,
bumbled our entrances,
fumbled our parts,
but we sang, oh yes,
we sang into the low golden light
of summer, sang
because joy, because
harmony, sang because
lonely, because fear,
sang because, tears
spilling down our cheeks,
we could sing, oh friends,
before we said goodbye,
we could sing.
New Soundtrack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged improvisation, music, singing, song, sound, spontaneity on May 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »
All day the world improvises
a song for me—song of bickering robins
and whispering grass, bright chime
of a text and gravel trucks that grumble
on the highway as they pass.
The song I would sing for you, let it be
as spontaneous as the chattering
of the cat watching hummingbirds,
as sharp as the flap of the flag in the wind.
Let me not sing the same song I’ve sung before.
This is the time to sing it new, to sing
the song we didn’t know we were brave enough
to sing. This is the time to sing
the most honest song, thorn song,
green song, yelp of relentless shine.
This is the time to sing as if our lives
depend on it, sing the song
that comes out of attending.
Song of pushing through dirt.
Song we don’t know yet.
Some Enchanted Evenings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, Corona Virus, Dennis McNeil, music, singing on March 27, 2020| 6 Comments »
with gratitude for Dennis McNeil
Every night now as I make dinner in Colorado,
I listen to a tenor sing live from his back porch
in California near the coast.
While I chop onions and chard
and sip on sauvignon blanc,
he belts tunes from Oklahoma
and Phantom of the Opera,
patriotic songs and Frank Sinatra,
and I sing along, my small soprano lifted
by his generous voice that baptizes the room.
This is the world I believe in—
a world ringing with beauty.
A world where people share their gifts
with strangers, knowing our lives
depend on this.
Between songs, he toasts us with gin,
and smiles. I return his toast with wine.
This is the way we carry each other
through difficulties, one song at a time.
One Measure
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, poem, poetry, road trip, singing on June 10, 2019| 3 Comments »
Why I Like Singing the Same Concert Six Times
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Heartbeat, music, poem, poetry, singing, transformation on March 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
for Heartbeat
singing
the same song,
again,
but this time
the melody
finds in me
a closed,
forgotten place
and sings light
into its tightness
until where
there were walls,
now wings
On Christmas Eve
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, daughter, hymn, parents, poem, poetry, singing on December 24, 2018| 1 Comment »
We sat in the pew
furthest back in the church.
My father would hum all the hymns
and I’d lean closer to him and hum along,
then lean toward my mother
and sing with her the words—
I swayed between them like a metronome,
humming, then singing, then
humming, then singing.
How giddy I was, grateful to be the girl
between them. I did not yet know how
difficult it was to be a parent.
I only knew how good it felt
to be loved, how safe I felt between them,
how delighted I was to find in myself
some part of each of them,
so delighted that even now,
over forty years later
and a thousand miles away,
I remember that night
and begin to sway.
One While Making Applesauce
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apples, poem, poetry, singing on October 27, 2018| Leave a Comment »