"You can hear," she said, "with your little finger
the tiniest change of resonance. The sound waves run
through your body, thrum in your muscles,
play in the cavities of your face, set your skull singing.
You can hear," the musician said, "with more than your ears."
I know this, vaguely, having felt the living hum
of wood against my fingers, and the rattling
in my throat when music ran loud as lightening
from the main-stage speakers. But my body is closed.
I do not hear like the musician and her kin.
How much I missed as I watched their interpreter
sign beside the drums, his hands like doves
in the plexiglass reflection.
the tiniest change of resonance. The sound waves run
through your body, thrum in your muscles,
play in the cavities of your face, set your skull singing.
You can hear," the musician said, "with more than your ears."
I know this, vaguely, having felt the living hum
of wood against my fingers, and the rattling
in my throat when music ran loud as lightening
from the main-stage speakers. But my body is closed.
I do not hear like the musician and her kin.
How much I missed as I watched their interpreter
sign beside the drums, his hands like doves
in the plexiglass reflection.
I cherish the glorious particularity of your poems, their alert specificity. While you may not hear like the musician and her kin, there is precious little of the subtle resonance of language that escapes you! The physicality of the first stanza, the felicity of the final simile (and of course the echoes, plural, within the small space of "plexiglass reflection": the stressed short e's, the trebly lambent l's, the x and the ct): there is very little, if anything, in this poem, in the thrum and the hum and the drum of it, that this reader wishes were otherwise. As always, thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Thomas! A lot of what I do is intuitive--I know something sounds "right," but I may not know why. So it is helpful (and fun!) to receive another perspective.
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