Music
Listen: the wood thrush's tremulous, sugary voice
as he dips in and out of the box elder; the morning
glories who have thin, scarlet tongues, or the wind
that billows and wants to carry off the umbrella.
We sit under swaying elms enraptured by a Hallelujah
chorus of birds while the neighbors 14 year old girl
practices Mendelssohn; she desires everything, I think,
up-tempo and manic. You can hear the tarantella
wanting to crawl out of her. But her teacher calms her:
espressivo, espressivo, he says, the open window
framing them in a perfect still life. I think again
how music emanates from all that's in motion:
those hollyhocks beside the fence singing, the garden's
baseline so steady underneath us, rivers of barometrical
air that rise and fall and hum at a pitch beyond our ears.
Look at this aria of saffron light; seems each molecule
in this heart shaped leaf is a psalm, if I could hear inside
its embossed veins. How I envy what owls must hear.
Or the red squirrel, or the dog whining a block away
or the fox – red flash at meadow’s edge -- or the mole,
like Milton in his blindness.
--Miguel de O