“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.” — 1 Corinthians 13:1
It arrives on jangling breeze,
a garden chime
of tinkling, mellow chaos
to find a summer window
shut tight a thousand winters now.
Slipping through the raucous din
of noisy life,
it frees up recollections
that were safely locked away
with all I hoped forgotten.
Those notes in glass and metal,
unbound relics,
easily drag me back to then.
Face and voice as bright as ever,
I grasp the air, to hold your hand.
It strikes hard, so soft a sound,
and so it lands,
shaking nerves you once had touched
leaving memories deeply pressed
in a wet and ready clay.
By lyrical mutation,
a dirty street,
becomes a country meadow,
the metal tubes and tinkling glass
brings our city minds to rest.
Over hot and twisted sheets,
and pillows tossed,
floating music fills the air,
recalled in fragile ashes
from the cigarettes we shared.
The tune drifts past me now,
a fitful song.
The melody becomes you.
For a moment you’re revived
then gone in sadder music.
11/13/2019
