I hear music through scenes in my mind. That is, when I listen to a song, I see a narration in my mind--images or characters or movements and colors, all expressing every musical phrase and note. This little quirk came especially handy in Music History classes, when my prof would ask us to write down our impressions of the pieces we were required to listen to every night. She never really cared what we said, so long as we put the listening experience into words. Some people described the music, the players, the instrumentation style. Some people tried to frame it in the historical context of the previous lecture. Not I. I wrote down little stories, adding in references to specific moments in the pieces. Once I wrote about a little girl with a red umbrella, dancing in the rain in her white ballet slippers. The narration of the piece followed her as she explored a world of rain, a world departing from her own. I can't remember the specific piece that inspired it any more, but I believe it was one of Haydn's. At the end there was a rather dramatic tonal shift, which became not only the end of the downpour, but also of reality stripping the little moment of magical splendor the girl had enjoyed.
My point is, that is how this poem came to be. Not from my music history notes, per say, but its images came to me through song. (Unfortunately, my original file containing the piece's information was corrupted two years ago. Luckily I'd written the poem by hand and still had it--on three post-it notes, no less.)
Courting
Sun-caught espresso
The color of your hair
As you ran through the grasses,
Tall as your chin, golden and seeded
Low whistles when the wind pushes them back
Bending the stalks but never breaking
Just as you always bend my thoughts,
Curling them around your thumb
Like a stray wisp of your silk-threaded dress.
We've spent hours here
Before this pond,
All the while dipping our toes into the cool,
The ebbs of shadows and flickering sky reflection
Upon your face, a dance of light
And I wondered what brush the artist would use
To capture the curl of your bang
Or the feathered gleam of your smile.
You leave me always crawling,
A star with no north to
Guide me,
And so we swim in the wilds,
Leave our clothes on the grassy bank
And pull leeches from our feet as the air pimples
Our skin.
We've come a long way from home
But I know afternoons never fade--
In some heart of time I know there is no present
Because there is no constant tock
From which we drag ourselves.
Even peering into the wrinkles of our faces I
Will see you as I see you now
And not the hollow of your eyes
Staring back at me without thought
Fingers straining for the hand that never came to
Hold them and bring you back to air.
Yes, sun-caught espresso
The color of your hair
As you ran through the grasses,
And I wondered so long
Trying to capture the flicker of your soul,
And now here is all that is left,
The seeded gold grasses and prairie and oak,
The weathered wood rowboat tied to shore
Of a pond whose leech-gray waters have been so still,
And when I look into them no ebbing of light do I see--
Like a stray wisp of your silk-threaded dress,
My will also breaks
And the silent waters ripple once again.
