Even a song can be an altar,
a place to bring an offering—
as on this anxious day
when I can’t stop giving my heart
to love songs for the broken world.
And perhaps the breath, too, is an altar
on which the song is placed,
which would mean what is sacred
might be ever flowing through us,
a space where we might meet the divine.
To believe this doesn’t change
the song, but it changes everything
about the singer.
Posts Tagged ‘song’
Consecration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, breath, sacred, song on October 29, 2024| 11 Comments »
The Opening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged holiday mathis, inspiration, singing, sky, song on August 7, 2024| 5 Comments »
for Holiday, in the James Turrell Skyspace at Cheekwood Gardens
Each moment of the day
a song is looking for its singer—
song before the eyelids rise,
song of hunger, song of dream,
song of waiting for the phone to ring,
song of groping in the dark,
song of walking through the garden,
song of trying on silver hats,
song of seeing the city’s edge.
And still so often we miss the song,
but today when Holiday
opened her mouth and began
to sing of cumulonimbus,
her clear tune spiraled through the small
white room with such astonishing
rightness I brimmed with gold
and cloud and kin,
her bright-winged notes soaring
in my body like a murmuration,
and I opened like dawn, like sky,
as if when one person dares
to be found by the song of the moment
and sing it true, they teach
the rest of us how to do it, too,
how to sing, sing wild, sing
ourselves alive, as if
it’s what we’re here to do.
While Hiking on Lizard Head Pass
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, grief, healing, hermit thrush, hiking, mountains, music, natural world, song 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.
Spelunking of the Soul
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cave, dante, paradiso, silence, song, soul on May 2, 2024| 8 Comments »
I woke in the cave of my heart,
a slim shadow nested inside
an unbounded shadow,
and there, after decades of chatter
and prattle, I found you, silence.
Or more truly, after my clanging
and crying, my praising and soothing,
silence found me.
Quiet comforter.
Place of no promises.
Infinite cradle. Infinite womb.
An endless invitation to wake
forever.
I woke in the cave of my heart
being tuned to join a song I knew
but had never been taught,
a song ringing inside every cell.
Whatever I’d thought
was my own voice was one silken thread
in a warp made of silence,
a weft made of song.
I met there all the beauty I could bear.
Is it here even now as I sit in my room
with the low hum of lights
and the long list of things to do?
I close my eyes,
empty my pockets of certainty,
listen for what is real.
One Beyond Practical
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, song, umbrella on February 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
for KC
an umbrella of song—
sure we got wet,
but man, did we smile
Reframe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awake, Eva Cassidy, insomnia, sleep, song on January 16, 2024| 8 Comments »
Some sleepless nights I imagine
Eva Cassidy might arrive in my room
with her old guitar and she’d sing to me,
her haunting notes draping
the air above me
like a humble and much loved quilt,
and I would curl little girl-like
into her lush and love-strung tones,
her clear voice a pure bell
ringing every jumbled thing
from my worry-cluttered mind.
I’d probably try to resist closing
my heavy lidded eyes.
What a gift it would be then
to stay awake.
In This Tender Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, consolation, friendship, grief, Rilke, silence, song on December 5, 2023| 2 Comments »
Offer your beauty always without calculation or defense.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, “Initial,” trans. Mark S. Burrows
Oh friend, it’s true. These dark hours
can crumple us, can press.
No way to escape their crush.
How merciless it can be,
the fist of grief,
how strong the squeeze,
how difficult to believe
we’ll survive.
Today, it is enough
to offer the world
only the simplest song—
the wordless, tuneless
song of beingness.
How beautiful it is,
this offering,
your breath against my cheek.
Inner Song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged companion, music, mystery, song on November 30, 2023| 4 Comments »
Perhaps you, too, have heard it,
despite the cacophony,
a song that rises in you—
a tune you’ve never learned
that somehow owns you
the way white owns winter,
the way breath owns
our lives. Perhaps you, too,
have marveled as the tune
spills forward, guiding you,
keeping you company
so that even when alone,
you know for certain
you are not alone.
The Humming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged healing, home, icu, mom, song on October 15, 2023| 26 Comments »
And there in the ICU, amidst the tubes
and rubber gloves, amongst the pillows
and the scent of disinfectant,
we build a house of song,
a house with rafters of “Moon River”
and a foundation of “Amazing Grace.”
There are lintels of “Wild Mountain Thyme”
and a hearth of “The Water is Wide,”
For an hour, we live inside the tunes
as they surround us, familiar rooms
where laughter is welcome,
where sleep might come,
where we live not outside of time,
but inside its melodic chambers,
not escaping the fear and the pain,
but companioning it with so much love,
so much beauty that somehow,
even in the halls of distress,
we nestle deeper in and feel safe.
*
Hi friends–oh my sweet mama is having a tough time–multiple surgeries, so many side swipes. It’s been a crazy time. At this moment, she seems to be stabilizing. Tonight I am so grateful for everyone who works in the medical professions–from those who leave home in the middle of the night to do emergency surgeries to those who keep the hospital floors clean–thank you to all who help those who need healing.
Love Song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, crow, introvert, love, song on October 6, 2023| 5 Comments »
We think only of the one-note racket,
the sharp, harsh caw of crow that claws at silence
in warning or begging or a rallying cry.
But the crow, too, sings—
not like the Romeo warblers,
so that all can hear, no—
it blends soft cooing and rattles and growls
to woo as it nuzzles and ruffles and bows,
as if the crow knows that some songs
are better when shared so close
that the only one who can hear them
is the one for whom they are sung.