Haunted by Music
by E.Y.
"Listen to the mandolin rain … Listen to the music on the lake … Listen to the banjo wind … A sad song drifting low …" —Bruce Hornsby
She writes a lot of songs, the dark-haired girl does.
She thinks in tempo and she dreams in melody.
When he comes home, she greets him in the rhythmic
wonder of her ways and kisses him a lyrical hello,
standing barefoot among gleaming kitchen fixtures
in cutoff bluejeans—a chorus of dizzying contrasts.
She daydreams a little, humming something to herself
while slicing tomatoes. She is plucking harp strings
in her head still tuned in to the noisy choir of her kids,
She listens when rain makes music on a watering can,
or wind is dancing in waltz time across the treetops.
Do summer storms truly throb and cry like mandolins?
This home of theirs is forever haunted by her music.
She's composer of the melody—-its song and its dance—
unmindful of those too numb to get the message
in a masculine world made so graceless for women.
For her, there's no nesting place without a symphony.
When nightfall comes, she longs for one song more.
He shakes his head in surrender and quiet indulgence,
like any man would do whose destiny has always
seemed to be about falling in love with music.
volume 11(6)
This poem is copyright © 2007,
E.Y., all rights reserved.
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