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Musical Notes

Written notes he wanted time to take, so much had happened
over the weekend, but instead,
notes of a musical kind,
took over.
All he could do was to try to step around the higher ones,
particularly the whole notes,
but the quarter notes could be tricky too
as he tried to avoid catching a toe
and stumbling.
Some of the early scores at Saturday’s presentation
sacred in nature,
did trip him up but he was soon walking,
upright and alert,
across Paul Simon’s Bridge Over Troubled Water
to joy’s other side,
the notes here, too, something to navigate but easier
somehow
the golden notes of I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
blending beautifully at the end with
God Bless the Child and Let There Be Peace on Earth,
the latter sung, so movingly,
by the town’s favorite soloist.

The musical notes the next day, became less obstacles to avoid
and more like stepping stones, a certainty
when you know,
like a prophet of old, how the day will end.
Verdi’s popular opera, Aida,
leads all its admirers, note by note, to love
and that’s what it did to him,
for a second day.
To be invited by his young friends to join them
and her family for a day at the opera
started it,
love, there at the beginning only to witness,
on stage,
backed by a full orchestra in the pit and powerful arias,
another form of it,
the devoted love between Aida and her general rising above
their death in a tomb.
Here, love is celebrated as only an opera can,
the large stage cast in red light,
the dark robes and black hats of the priests,
the flowing white tunics of the young women dancers,
a whirl of movement and contrast capturing the eye
as well as the ear,
the gigantic effort to match love’s power
emerging in a thundering, full-bore finale.
Music at its fullest.

The next morning’s music is entirely different, silent notes,
serenely spaced,
with unguarded love between them.
The only stage is the kitchen counter,
no audience for the two friends
who speak softly over cups of freshly-brewed coffee
and steeped tea.
Housemates for almost three years now,
she, an empathic soul, can always sense when a discordant tune
is being hummed
beneath the lyrics of their everyday, and so she finds him,
ready to run.
So she did what good friends do,
she called him back, reminding him of her love for him,
how deep and enduring it is
and always will be,
gratitude there for the way he has nourished her.
He, in turn, only too happy
to acknowledge her gifts to him, teaching an old dog new tricks,
helping him to come to grips with himself,
to love himself more deeply and thus able to love others
more.
At the end of the hour’s duet, having gone up and
down the harmonic scale, he makes a promise
he will let the universe know
he’s open to a miracle,
that out there someplace is his own intimate partner,
his perfect match.

 

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