The Borrowed Voice

               


          From the sensuous beauty of the violin:
the flaring hips, the swelling belly,
the flaming patterns in the wood,
the cells of the wood where live
all the sounds, the songs,
the voices, the vibrations,
the hollow place of air
set free through the F holes,
the set feet of the bridge,
the sound post between maple and spruce,
and the strings pulled
by hair of a Siberian pony's tail,
the Brazilian pernambuco bow,
the tension just enough for strength,
the flex just before the breaking point,
        Comes a voice
        almost human,
more perfect than human.
How can I say goodbye to you?

      When you are a human,
when your vocal cords stiffen,
your high notes crack,
your age declares itself.
My mother had to let it go,
her voice, her self;
The hopeful young soprano,
the joyful virtuosity,
mortal.

   The brass player's brilliance and bravura,
the woodwind's facility,
the dance and ripple of notes,
the song sparrows and finches of instruments;
will all slow, stumble, be silenced.

  Shall I hang on,
stiff and cramped,
pushing through the pain?

  But, each day, some note rings clear,
something still pulls out the song,
the old seduction from
before I can remember.

  The violin remembers,
remembers all its lives,
all the hands, all the bows,
everyone who has borrowed its body,
everyone who set free its voice.

Farewell to Ralphie

                When the family had all gone, daughters and spouses to Vermont, Bob to play his shows, I went upstairs to the guest bedroom. All the bedding had been neatly stacked, quilts and blankets, pillows, and the airbed was still inflated. All I could think was: what a smorgasbord of delights for Ralph, our cat. Our cat, who had suddenly fallen ill with pancreatitis a few days before Christmas, and had to be euthanized on Christmas morning when complications arose.
              I know that the loss of a pet is nothing, compared to a human family member dying, which is on a whole other plane. But there is a purity and simplicity to the love we feel toward these animals who share our everyday lives and are so dependent on us. Ralphie was with Bob and me for twelve and a half years, and we had adopted him as a six-week-old kitten.
              I remember that he was so tiny that I was afraid he would get lost in some hole in a closet in our old house. He had huge ears and a very loud voice when he demanded his food. He lived up to his namesake, Ralph Kramden, except he had a very happy temperament. All he wanted was a cozy place to squeeze up to you, and plenty of food. He slept on the camel saddle in Bob's practice room and never moved while Bob played the trombone. Yet he could hear the crinkle of a treat bag two floors away.
              For the first few years of his life, I was working in New York much of the time and only saw him and Alice when I came down to Philadelphia. But in 2012 that job ended, and I was much less busy as a freelance musician. He became a companion to me as I sat and read, a warm presence in cold winters in the leaky, old house. Wherever his people were, he wanted to be.
             A few years ago he had a couple of nights in an emergency vet hospital with a urinary blockage that would have killed him. I realized how much his company meant to me. I was at a time of major change in my life. My working life was contracting, and, finally, I had to have two shoulder surgeries over three years. I was at home recovering, mostly alone, and with no idea what came next.
           There on the couch was Ralphie. He would roll over to have his belly petted, do the upside-down-head flirting, purr hugely. He made a room welcoming, made our house a home.
          Now I tear up at the sight of an old couch cushion he used for "mama claws" covered with yellow fur.
         When my mother died in 2012, I finally cried when my brother played a recording of her singing a DaFalla Spanish song. The clear, joyful young voice of my mother finally cut through my complicated feelings and allowed pure grief.
         When I cry about Ralphie, I am also crying for my lost career as a violinist, for my parents, for loneliness. Who will so easily offer up comfort as this creature?

         My daughters, Bob, and I had a  ceremony of goodbye to him by video conference call. Bob played, and we sang a  little poem I had written a while ago to the familiar tune:

         Ralphie's Ode To Joy

              Bites of chicken,
              Lap to sit in,
Lying on my back in sun,

          Unmade beds
         with rumpled blankets,
Any cloth left on the floor.

  When new people sit in the sofa,
How I love to snuggle up.

       All my life is simple pleasure,
food and love and comfy things.

Home to September

              It is September: real life returns after the suspended time of summer. Summer no longer means freedom to me--freedom from what, when I am no longer working? Summers are too hot, I can't enjoy being outside; by August there is a heaviness, an inertia in the air. The first cool days and nights are such a relief.
     
             Even when autumn meant school and all its pressures, I welcomed the clearness of the days and the undercurrent of melancholy. I have always been a minor mode kind of person, feeling the contrasts, the way a warm, lit house welcomes me when the weather is cold. Life is precious when you know it will end; not in a morbid way, not as a depressed person, but as the poets have always known. Perhaps because I have been fortunate in my life, I seek the balance of a streak of sadness, the knowledge that I am alone, and all this beauty is a temporary gift.

January Walk

                       Today was bare and grey and foggy. I wandered across the long hills of the former Curtis estate, now all old trees, trees that rared up out of the mist like druids. One tree was twisted as if yearning to pull itself out of the ground and drag away into the fog.

                     I walked in my own pocket of silence, alone except for one or two distant dog walkers. Then suddenly, a team of Amazonian girl runners crested a hill and tore past, sleek in elegant tights, their long, black ponytails flying behind them. They ran up the longest hill with perfect form and speed, moving sculptures. I was nearly invisible as they passed, young deer goddesses, allowing me to see them for a moment in their human guise.

                     I was bundled up against the chill, puffing as I squished back up the soggy slope. I admired, even yearned a little for that youthful energy. But my freedom is being my imperfect self, and a January day that is a fresh beginning. The year begins again, the trees are black shapes waiting for far-off spring, the day is grey and white, waiting for color. I have time. No one is looking at me, I have nowhere to go, I can do anything or nothing at all.

Summer's End

Journal Entry August 28, 2018

    Coming to the rag end of summer, a heat wave on the cusp of autumn, the serious time of year.  I have been in a mode of waiting to heal, to fix my body, one part at a time. At some point life has to go on.

    I went to the Art Museum today to escape the heat and find inspiration. Yes, art does transcend, yet I see a painting by Edwin Dickinson from 1938, a dark impressionistic landscape that the signage says reflects the unease as war approaches. The artist is more timeless than the journalist or the politician, for sure, but they do feel the currents around them,and they often prophesy.
   I am most drawn to the lonely landscapes: Homer's "Winter Shore"--rough, bleak, threatening, sliding on snowy rocks to the sea below; Hopper's picture of blowing trees beside an empty road, only the invisible observer present; a strangely claustrophobic Andrew Wyeth: a foreshortened hallway to a room at the end with a few tools in it, all browns and greys, geometric.

  On the way home I heard Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" symphony, with Lukas Foss on the piano, Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Music cannot stand back like a painting can. It is the soundtrack of our lives. This work is raw emotion, finally; seems intellectual at first, with its long variations, almost Hindemith-like in construction and spareness. Then he breaks out with a scream of anguish. But it isn't the end--off he goes into a dance down Broadway, a fin-de-siecle night on the town, and the next morning a wary acceptance, a weary acceptance.

   So what is it for me? Sometimes--often--I think that I don't have that many years left, and I should do something important to help this damaged world. What have I ever given, really?
   And yet, how would I use my particular talents? This human mess will go on with or without me, and isn't going to be changed by me. I am bound to be more frustrated and miserable the more I think about all the horrors. I can vote, I can give some money here or there. People who thrive on anger, or energetic young people, or the truly strong and noble can try to change things.
 
it is ungrateful to not love the day, the nature around me, the murmuration of leaves on the trees outside my window, the moonlit clouds, and the sun still greeting the morning. I can't spend my last years poisoned by a bunch of horrible old men.

         June 12, 2016--Journal Entry in the New House

             I love, almost more than anything, the wind in trees. This neighborhood has tall trees, oaks, maples, and in our yard there is a very tall locust, and so many other trees, that at this  time of year the back yard is all shady. I sat out there this late day on the light-dappled lawn under a tree with heart-shaped leaves (what is it?) and read.
            How often in Brooklyn I hungered, literally yearned in my mouth and throat and being, for the sound of wind in a tall tree, a pine maybe. I would escape to a park or all the way to Bear Mountain, but I couldn't hear the sound from my home. I couldn't hear it from Fishtown, either.
           Now I am here in paradise, in Elkins Park. It has been a perfect early summer, not yet hot, plenty of rain for the lawns and gardens. Peaceful people walk their dogs as I stroll around in the cooling evening air. Children's laughter comes from back yards, a boy runs by in stocking feet, holding his sandals. A family holding ice cream cones from Sprinkles around the corner gets ready to load into their car.
           It's hard to believe there was a horrible massacre in Orlando today, one man mowing down scores of people. It's impossible to picture the madness and rage in the Middle East and Africa, and in the violent, poverty-stricken areas of Philadelphia only a few miles from here. How did we get so lucky, and why are so many others not lucky at all?
            I feel guilty, but I also don't know how to equalize it or if I can. I'm not made of heroic material. I will be open to some possibility, but I also want to fully appreciate this gift, this "reward" after my own struggles. The struggles were nothing, comparatively, but it is also ungrateful to do less than seize the joy of wind in the trees and a catbird singing and mewing in the dogwood tree.

           I'm so glad for Dad that he had the farm for so long--so glad for all of us. He worked and fought for teachers' rights, taught those recalcitrant kids for  little money, worried about whether he could support us all, and then he really did. What sweet triumph for him to look over his acres, the vegetable garden, the family gathered on the screened porch, the sunset between the barns.

You Would Never Know It

                 

                      I am a wild  thing.
You would never know it to look at me, the most invisible:
        a plump, graying white woman in frumpy clothes.

                       Oh, I don't care!

That is the freedom, as free as
       a nose-picking, butt-scratching, tree-climbing six-year-old.

I grew out of dirt, I rolled in dirt and leaves,
I straddled the tree branch, I was the tree.
I flew in the wind,
I screamed.

They tried to keep me down,
      but I was molten at the core,
      my eyes blazed out,
      my power built and built,
      and one day I blew
      and flamed hot lava all over the world.

I was the most dangerous creature on earth:
     a sexual woman,
     the maw of my power engulfed all men.
     I drew them into me
     and fed my energies,
     or flung them off like chaff in the wind.

I was the creator of symphonies, of great tragedies.
I was Sarah Bernhardt, who fainted when she was bored.
I could have been Cleopatra.
I chose to live a simpler life,
     but I smiled secretly.

I birthed twins, since one was not enough.
     I might have been pregnant for years, I was so fertile.
     I would have a child of every race,
     people the earth with my lovely, lively, mocha, almond,
     boundless offspring.
                  I am always the mother
                  among all the mothers.

Now I am the goddess of no face,
     the wind, the full moon.
     I slip among you,
     watching,
     pitying your ambition,
     the weight of your work, your struggle for recognition.
                I know everything and nothing.
I fly over it all,
    look down on anthills, the log rolled over,
    see the ocean still relentless,
    the jet stream,
    solar storms.

              I close my eyes.