APRIL QUESTION
When birdsongs are slowed
they are not music but
imperatives, challenges,
summonings, complaints.
If our whinings and shoutings
and ragings were slowed,
would we hear them,
I wonder, as song?
If you’re interested, here’s where the idea came from:: https://www.workplacegallery.co.uk/video/20/)
SWAN LAKE
I was washing the supper dishes,
and on the radio came “Swan Lake.”
Since I don’t dance, I conducted.
As I waved my dishcloth in time,
it dawned on me like slow winter sunrise
that Pyotr was himself a swan
trapped by his times in the form
of a bearded man.
If he lived today
he could dance in feathers and white satin,
caught and steadied by a beautiful prince.
No sorcerer would do him harm.
He would be full of grace and celebration.
And at the end, he would ascend
above the Lake, and shine.
BACH HEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME
A JAZZ IMPROVISATION ON “SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE”
How—how do you do that?
The beat that stays and breaks,
the theme there but not there,
inverting, stretching, sideways.
Is it sideways? And that bass line,
as if walking on organ pedals,
—that pace. Now you’re turning
it again, aren’t you? Around
the progression but there’s a—no,
wait! Oh, the intervals holding
the tension! Oh, please, please!
Show me how it’s done!
MUSIC LESSON #3
Seven note chords
from wind,
from sun,
from a pentagram
we found in the air.
IN CHORUS
When we sing, we sing. We become
the song. Notes have ceased to matter.
Our heart beats the pattern, the shape
of the time, the space of the spiral
where we stand. We drink harmony
from the fountain; we’re held
in the great mystery’s form. Farewell
to self-entanglement. We’re bending
like willows. The valley rejoices.
Unlonely, we journey through the night.
As each stone adds its voice
to the singing of the stream,
even our troubles flow like love.
We are beautiful and good.
All our mouth is filled with music.
MUSIC LESSON
Hafiz, sing with me. Do you play banjo
or hurdy-gurdy? Can you sing in Polish
or Greek? We never sang around the table,
here in Vermont or anywhere, not even
in Warsaw when we were all pleasantly drunk
on Jarek’s soul-cleansing vodka. What will
it take to make us sing? Hafiz, I need
to know your ecstasy and I can’t drink
that much anymore and if I spin, I fall
down dizzy and sick. I’ll have to make do
with walking while all around me the amber
ash leaves swirl and the maple trees bleed,
and the memory of a great-horned owl sings
from the pines in the woods across the way.
I’ve been rereading the poems of Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky.
Last night, the chorus I sing in had its last practice with our long-time conductor. I wrote this this morning, thinking of her and our time together:
THE LAST SONG
~for Susan Borg
Every song is the last.
How can I keep from singing—
that group in the church loft,
remember? and we stopped
and looked around, amazed.
No audience but ourselves.
Francois and Chuck over the rainbow,
with tears in their eyes and our eyes.
Hallelujah on New Year’s Eve
and the audience sang, too.
Hearth and Fire that last night,
all together, my voice breaking
as I met your eyes. Every song
is the last—each song, each time,
these singers, where they are,
what they carry, what they hold,
what they let go.
THE CRUELEST MONTH
Here, it’s March.
The back door was opened.
Now it’s closed.
We don’t know what to wear,
where to turn.
The petals of yesterday’s crocuses
are frightened stiff today.
And Lent, of course,
our season of deprivation.
The less you eat, the longer you live.
The dog has to go out, never mind chill below zero.
On this deserted street, through my muffled head
I hear the nine o’clock bells ringing
from the steeple of the Federated Church.
An old familiar carol.
I stop to listen while the dog sniffs
a plastic tricycle left beside the sidewalk.
“The world in solemn stillness lay” is it?
“To hear the angels sing”? Yes.
A pause, and then “Once in Royal David’s City.”
Through carelessness or a great kindness,
through the misery of March,
Christmas rises triumphant.
Now, through the instability of things,
I need this wild sweet music so much more
than I did in December’s beginning time.
There is a time to sing,
to eat and drink abundance,
a time to remember the return of light,
youth and brilliance, salvation,
the givenness of everything.
There is no one else on the street,
so I begin to sing along:
“with the poor, and mean, and lowly. . .”
The dog looks up at me, puzzling,
and wags her tail.
GRASS
Winter Prompt #17
Once there was grass,
dandelion and clover,
gill-over-the ground.
Once there was green.
It’s there, still,
under the frozen slush,
the snow. Under
the deep puddles,
the shallow ice lakes
that cover the pastures.
It will turn again;
it will grow green.
The commonplace
miracle.
Resiliance is reality.
EARWORMS
Winter Prompt #18
I slept well with no dreams I can recall.
When I awoke, I noticed first
the light on the ceiling
of the hotel room—or rather a light
and its dimmer double, down
and to the left—an alarm or sensor
blinking orange every half-minute.
I closed my right eye to make the double
disappear. My eye is not single,
I thought. I hardly remember
what that was like. The light is one
though the lamps be many. Then One light
ascending through four notes
and The light is one though the lamps be many
in a dominant chord
over the sitar, after the wandering
verses I can’t remember. One light,
The light is one though the lamps be many.
That simple chorus like a child’s song.
Of course—O brilliant!—the Incredible
String Band’s search—scattered lights
of many lamps, patterns that don’t stick,
chordless rifts resolving into One light.
The light is one though the lamps be many.
Of course. ’Tis the gift to be simple.
A NAME
. . . Surprise is a name of God.
~Brother David Steindl-Rast
Who else would bring a pair of owls
to circle my head on New Year’s night?
Or a fox to the front step
just at sunset yesterday? Who
could have handed us a little child
with round cheeks, his mother’s mouth,
his daddy’s smiling eyes?
In the gray and icy drizzle of winter,
who else would have sent a foot of snow,
north wind to slice through our dismay?
Or gathered us together
and crowned us with roses,
taught us how to sing?
