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

Entering My Seventh Decade

Tonight I hear the quiet years

as they tiptoe past the clock.

Still, summer light lingers here between

fall’s melody and rhythm.

My hands gather mornings and friends

tuned to my life’s unfathomable keys.

 

The rosined bow of time draws slow over

my thoughts in a sigh, and you are here.

Our songs are entwined as swans

nesting on the weight of our days.

Vast is the music nearly below hearing—

loss has engraved its hammers here and there;

still, your sky tunes my mind

and hope plays upon my harp like water,

welcome and sweet.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, ☺2020

East Wind NaPoWriMo #7

        When I go, I want it to be

while the east wind is lowing

through the crack in the bedroom window.

At first, you think that sounds mournful.

 But really, such raw beauty

is quite companionable.

We’ll get along fine,

the east wind and me.  I love the expanse

of his unfathomable music.  He loves

the way I hear.

Listen for me among the fiddling branches

when the east wind roves free,

playing storms on wild November nights.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2020

Message to the World NaPoWriMo #4

In the swing of my arms I know

I belong here.  My spirit is alive right here.

My childhood home, the old downtown:

Camas, Washington; Fern Prairie,

Ireland District, our woods –

we can never leave

each other.

Music and art bloom in us like

so many tulips, constellations of fireflies,

a dazzle of autumn leaves.  We construct home

with our arts.

I feel my lungs threshing oxygen

from the precious air.

My heart rocks the cage of my chest –

I look homeward and see forever.

Let us dare to keep on like this.

Friends, this is my real life! It is sacred.

No matter what,

I send my message to the world.

J. Pratt-Walter, 4/4/2020

Last Waltz

How my body 

wants to waltz!

Now, when the wild lupin lifts

its blue triumph over the tipsy

orchard grass,

now as the tiger lilies flex their

orange arms.

Now, as cherry blossoms

feather their way to the ground,

hinting of the lips of fruit

almost too rich to bear,

let us waltz this one warm river away from any clock,

hands so alive, feet

haunting the floor with yearning

for more –

one last sunset time before the metallic

broken bell of parting.

J. Pratt-Walter, (c)2019

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

Forest Faerie Lesson

She thought it was

the stony hand of gravity pressing her

all the day long into the grit

of twilight, and her breath

was heavily afraid.

Then the forest faeries whispered

into her mind,

her mind shaped its music,

her music lit her heart,

her heart, for a moment, held all the sky,

every animal person, every plant.

She saw gravity’s authority only works

when you believe in it,

as does flight,

so she gained sky, the ugly-duckling-days made fresh,

her own brilliance filling her hourglass

with green magic that was

always there.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2018