A Favorite Song

"Like when I hear it or play it, I just feel such raw emotion....like the emotion you feel before it turns into something specific. It just releases this feeling inside of me that makes me crumble into the most inner place of myself--a place I always forget I have. When I hear it, I just want to withdraw into the rhythm, get absorbed by the melody, and just feel the rest of the world fall away.

I guess that's the simplest way I can put it."

(I dug this out of my drafts folder today, and cannot, for the life of me, remember who I said it to. I'd love to figure it out, so if this sounds like something you remember me saying to you, please tell me!)

Cookouts

Can you hear them? The plea crying out from every stark white, oval-topped gravestone in Arlington Cemetery? They all say the same thing: "remember me." Can you hear them above the sounds of steaks sizzling on the grill? Can you see them amidst the fireworks? Do your children know that today means more than a cookout at the neighbors' and red, white, and blue sparklers? Today isn't just another day off, just another paid holiday, just another excuse to gorge on potato salad and hot dogs. As we sit around this evening drinking coffee with relatives and complaining about the government, let's remember how we got the freedom to do that. And let our laughter be filled with appreciation that we have wonderful things to laugh about. We're so blessed, and it's only by the grace of God and the bravery of our soldiers that we're able to do, say, go, and think about whatever we want to. Please, let's not forget that. Not today. Not any other day.

Enchantment

Pink champagne flowed freely from the crystal cruets that graced every tuxedoed waiter’s silver tray.  Strains of laughter mingled with whispered lines of romantic poetry as masked lovers exchanged sultry glances.  The thickening twilight danced outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the great hall, echoing the enchantment that enveloped the scene on the other side of them.  And there he stood in the midst of it all, feasting his senses on every ounce of it—a boy, not quite an adult, but far from a child.  His lanky form swam in the tuxedo that was too big for him.  A dark mask concealed his face, wrapping elegantly across his hollow cheekbones, the black swirls beautifully contrasting his pale complexion.  Across the expansive dance floor he watched as beautiful women twirled, their skirts billowing across the golden marble.  Greens, blues, scarlets, and deep purples painted a rainbow that pulsed throughout the ballroom. 

The boy looked above him.  Chandeliers the size of small rooms were suspended above the scene, dimly watching the party-goers from their vantage point high in the ballroom.  The boy could not count how many there were exactly, for they seemed to stretch endlessly on into a world behind the mirrors that graced the ceiling and far walls.  As the boy staggered around the hall, he noticed paintings between the mirrored sections of wall and ceiling.  Above him, the crystal chandeliers illuminated depictions of God and angels and replicas of the artwork of the Sistine Chapel.  The cherubs and seraphim gazed down upon the revelling party guests, laughing along with their cacophony of merriment. 

The orchestra that played reminded the boy of heaven itself.  Deep cellos complimented the harpist and violinists as dancers swayed and twirled to the ¾ waltz that was piping throughout the ballroom.  The boy’s eyes fleetingly met with those of a dancer—a slender blonde woman draped in a copper gown, her ringlets swept gracefully into an effortless arrangement on top of her head.  Her face shimmered with a faint sheen of glitter, and a mask of crimson ribbon and golden feathers hid the rest of her beautiful face from sight.  But her fiery green eyes pierced through the mask and met the boy’s own dark ones for a split second.  That second was all it took for him to see, in those glowing pools of emerald, things he’d never seen in the world before—beauty, enchantment, and forbidden things.  Then, just as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone again, twirling into another man's arms.

Russian Caravan

Rolls of thunder
Match brazen plunders
As hands exchange coins of gold.
Stolen no doubt
By a knife or a pout
From the girl whose eyes burn bold.

The fires roar
As tales of yore
Are whispered around the flames.
The gypsies dance
To songs of romance
Beneath a moon in wane.

And there she stands
With a globe in her hands
Will your fate be good or bad?
Ask if you dare
And see how you'll fare
If you don't, you may go mad.

The fortune sings
Tells all of the things
Within your future she sees
And all this I find
As I take my good time
Drinking this first sip of tea.

Howl's Moving Castle

I listened, then listened again.  The melody was so haunting, so...iridescent.  It teased a part of my memory that I couldn't quite recall.  A childhood encounter long since tucked away in the corners of my dusty mind.  And it lingered gently, like the last flutters of butterfly-wing dreams.  It played in my brain, floating about my mind, peeking shyly behind cracked doors, ducking quickly into darkened corridors, and I could hear the memory it almost evoked laughing through a dimly lit hallway.  I could just...reach out...and grab it.  But not quite.  So I'll listen again and maybe this time, I'll be able to illuminate the memory that it so coyly teases me with from behind my mind's half-blind eye. 

And then..."The song is almost like a dance."  Yes it is.  That's exactly right.  A dance I remember from so long ago.  Balance, Soutenu, Echappe, Piroutte.  I remember now.  I remember being a small child just learning the steps and the song I had forever replayed in my mind to remind me how to perform them.  Balance, Soutenu, Echappe, Piroutte.  Even now I sing the steps in my head to the tune of this shy melody, or something similar to it, and I am reminded of the way those notes carried my tiny ballet shoes across the studio floor.

Black Feathers

On whispered breeze there flies a crow,
Not knowing what he seeks
Aimless wander, screech of woe
Hated, banished thief

With chill of Fall beneath his wings,
He shudders from the cold
Not welcomed into anything,
Just chased by scare or scold

His blackened stare rests on me,
I grieve his pain-filled eyes
I call out out to him gently,
But he will not leave the skies

Forced to fear all good intent,
He wistfully flies alone
This battered soul in slow descent,
Starved to skin and bone

On whispered breeze he drifts away,
Black feathers bent in flight
Perhaps I'll gain his trust some day,
One chilly Autumn night