Harp of Night

    Over the fields, shielded by deep firs

the Harp of Night awakens.

Autumn darkness fingers the cold strings

and quickens the winds that marvel and moan,

 

to delight and dance and pursue,

to shimmer a heart into ecstasy,

to ladle me into a fathomless well of Mystery.

At twilight I would savor her velvet beauty   

and, placing my hands over her highest strings,

stroke down and down, playing the glissando of

my life as I move through the years

until the deepest strains tally my time.

 

Sometime my Conductor 

will cue from beyond the veiled firs,

me to unbind my final encore 

from the womb of the night’s own harp

until rallentando, decrescendo, finé.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2020

Quilt of Sound

Mom made quilts the way I write music –

colors coursing along and turning to face

new and unexpected friends,

each shade and chime an atlas

of melody and harmony cupped in union.

Mom started very simply –

ten rows of six by six blocks,

leftover fabrics from sewing our clothes.

But Nine-Patch gave itself over to Friendship Star

to Drunkard’s Path in its labyrinthine circus.

I heard the simplest melodies

skating along in my thoughts,

then built a forest of music and rhythm

bowing under its own weight to touch the Earth

or offering itself to skies and fires and hearts.

Eventually, quilt or song, they mapped a new universe

stringing dissonance in its angular way

to pools of consonance, to a divine resolution

or not.

And my songs now?  Their notes hover over the quilts

and touch down like larkspur petals,

like an eyelash, like moth tracks,

a fabric of air woven upon my harp saying

“Hi, mom.  I will always remember you.”

J. Pratt-Walter, (c) 2018