POeT SHOT # 6 - Blog Post by Ray Greenblatt

POeT SHOTS #6                                                                            Blog Post by Ray Greenblatt

                                                      
MUSICAL RAPTURE       by Lisa Lutwyche

I am a child in bed, unable to sleep.

My mother's piano rings through the house,
lovely and tortured, both things at once.
Passages played over and over until they obey.
And when the music does the will of her strong,
able fingers, it makes me cry.
The hair raises on my skinny arms.

My ugly cheeks rain with tears.

Musical rapture wraps me, wide-awake,
all colors and rocking waves of feeling.
I don't know what to do. I'll break the spell
if I go to my mother, who plays downstairs, alone.
But I want to tell her I'm listening.
Someone is listening to her wasted music.

Even now it comes to me. Chopin. Bartok.

My sister's breathing, my mother's hands,
bringing to my heart something like pain.
Dangerous, evocative, music reaches too deeply,
too far into a past I've never understood.
A secret, in the night, no one else to hear the piano.
She only played when my father wasn't there.

Except when they played together,
cello, piano, my held breath.


The strong rhythm carries us through the poem. There's a mystery here; only hints in the ending. When music is "beautiful," we wonder at disjointed wording: "tortured-obey-will-strong-cry-skinny-ugly-tears-alone-wasted-pain-dangerous-secret." An entire world hides in and behind the music.