Listen closely. Small halos dropping out of the leaves, little tambourine
sounds. A catbird mimics the wood thrush. Follow it into the thicket,
follow it into the vines. Or sing to it, to make it come.
Ghost of a call, ghost of an answer. A music teacher
told me once, Phrasing is all. But also I love
what falters and stops, starts again. Trying, always trying.
Water so green, it’s audible. It wants so much, because it can.
At night, lamps are lit at the kitchen window and the dark
spools behind like a trail for moths. Here they come,
drunk with the light and beating their lovely wings.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Always a Story
- Landscape with Sudden Rain, Wet Blooms, and a Van Eyck Painting
- Letter to Implacable Things
- Landscape, with Cave and Lovers
- Miniatures
- Letter to Self, Somewhere Other than Here
- Ghazal with a Few Variations
- Letter to Silence
- Landscape, with Returning Things
- Postcard to Grey
- Not Yet There
- Letter to the Street Where I Grew Up (City Camp Alley, Baguio City)
- Between
- Parable of Sound
- Letter to Providence
- Glint
- The Beloved Asks
- Letter to Longing
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Twenty Questions
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Interlude
- Villanelle of the Red Maple
- Letter to Leaving or Staying
- Salutation
- Letter to Love
- Letter to Fortune
- Territories
- Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
- Dear season of hesitant but clearing light,
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Singing Bowl
- [temporarily removed by author]
- Risen
- Refrain
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Dear heart, I take up my tasks again:
- Landscape, with Repeating Sounds
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Risk
- Vocalise
- Tremolo
- Interior Landscape, with Roman Shades and Lovers
- Bird Looking One Way, Then Another
- Gypsy Heart
- Landscape with Carillon
- Letter to Ardor
- Landscape, with Salt and Rain at Dawn
- Marks
- Landscape, with Sunlight and Bits of Clay
- Slaying the Beast
- Measures
- In a Hotel Lobby, near Midnight
- Landscape with Shades of Red
- Between the Acts
- Letter to Duty
- Letter to Nostalgia
- You
- Song of Work
- Balm
- Landscape, with Wind and Tulip Tree
- From the Leaves of the Night Notebook
- Letter to What Must be Borne
- Redolence
- Letter to Myself, Reading a Letter
- Night-leaf Tarot
- Trauermantel
- Foretelling
- Aubade, with Sparrow
- Reverie
- Mineral Song
- Layers
- Prayer
- Proof
- Landscape as Elegy for the Unspent
Very lyrical, Luisa and Dave. The phrasing is flawless/
especially like the light, dark and the wanting green
Dave and Luisa, I found a response in me this morning…
Antiphon
Night falters, songs emerge.
Venus fades into the dawn sky.
Behind the curtain of daylight
she phrases calls that mimic
no other. From the thicket
where the heart resides,
little tambourine sounds.
Rosemary,
But of course it’s in “the thicket/ where the heart resides…”
Lovely antiphon.
xo
I love the ending, those beautiful moths.
Lovely falters, Luisa!