The Prism of the Lyre
Dedicated to a musician
“any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely possible”

1.
Since you, my songful sun, quit me this morn,
transcribed the sound of those sweet strains, thus gone,
to tears. Those airs, adagios that were born
to catch and pin swirls of creation on,
devolved to dearth and black, like night, before
the god-like Orpheus places hand on lyre
to praise day’s rise from rest, unveiling drape
of meadow, tree, blue sky o’er sheep-white hill.
Your face unlined by troubled sleep, your shape,
curved gently to your instrument, your trill
of heart enlivens mine to wake to shore,
and cease to drift alone in madness’ mire.
If ears were made to hear, and hands to hold,
allow the play to last, that light unfold.

2.
Allow the light to rise, that play unfold.
Apollo sun, that burns through many moods
igniting stories meant to be retold
where bodies stage their earthly interludes.
The weekends spin in pinwheels ’round your star,
its golden rays a virtual caress.
You touch the keys that free the gods to act
with fleet unfettered force on human form.
Through fields of fiction, or in flow of fact,
as music is a lifeline through the storm,
you’ve hewn a path from here to far,
an alternate escape route from duress.
So, cupped in slumber, surely lovers lie
with dreams aswirl from such a lullaby.

3.
From such a swirl I dream a lullaby.
I journey in broad day, through shivered sound
where towers built of chord-filled color lie.
Arpeggiated rhythm moistens ground,
a moat for castle floating in the air.
Invisible, a carpet’s warp and weft
are shuttled notes, in phrases back and forth,
that magically keep it there in space.
Without a south, an east, a west, a north,
the compass points are sharps and flats that place
majestic form and harmonies somewhere,
My heart has pressed this shape, it has not left.
So memories of you shift-shape to be
A consonant sonata blue, for me.

4.
A blue sonata, consonant as calm.
And then a fanfare gold, announcing sky.
A joyful joke, this one more day of palm
and browning grasses on the hillside high.
The dance in three-four time, a brief rondo,
and when the recapitulation comes,
oh love, to be alive and yours alone
would be the sweetest sort of trance.
A symphony that no one else could clone
A lilting two-step no one else could prance
I’d be a turtle dove to your king crow.
And crown you with a groom’s chrysanthemums.
I’d sing of acres, scrub Atlantis’ brine.
If you were mine, my love, and only mine.

5.
In mine designed to search for jewels in,
we’d turn the pages of a score and find
how shaft leads to a secret place where jinn
will grant the wished-for, suave, melodic rhyme,
and sweet release of resolution, played
in dulcet tones. Striated voicing walls
the whole, a direct show of tenderness,
a kindness offered up through layers of earth.
We’d open doors and let folks guess
that wonders do proceed by such research.
At times in heat, at times at peace, we’d lay
all time’s discovered tunes in precious halls.
For though the world can be so cold and dim,
music can alleviate the grim.

6.
The grime of muses left in alleys bare,
the musings of lost children’s unformed brains,
the map that leads to beauty none will share,
the rains, the rains, the rains, the rains, the rains.
And after flood, oh where that olive branch,
the joy of placing foot on solid land,
the sounds that lead to sustenance and hope,
the cooing of the dove, the settled nest,
the dipping oar to keep the boat afloat?
At night, if ways be lit by will o’ wisp
in flights of mind or wing, no need to blanche,
when safety is assured by outstretched hand,
a human chain of history and song.
Oh childish dreamer, where do we go wrong?

7.
So wrong for us to dream on, like a child?
Yes, I could mow this plot of flowers down,
and let the garden in my mind go wild.
Let fallow fields find rest from what is grown.
Like clouds that brush the moon, the Ferris wheel
that swings me up so I can sense night-moves
would still be churning at the fair, and fan
a flame of fantasy, or two – smoke rings.
[Since you have touched me where few others can,
fruition bears so sweet a taste, it stings.]
They dissipate like furtive things that steal
into the dark, to beats from vinyl grooves.
The overture just cigarettes fresh lit,
a walk in cinders, if your love-song quit.