Like music, like air, like breathing—you tell me—life has its tonal qualities if you will train the eye and listen. You point me first to birds in flight—fine arcs of silver and gray headed into the clouds and perhaps beyond—traveling away and toward, with some sense of eventuality and a brave belief that flight is an answer to the loneliness of one place and not another.
I have been searching for what you find in the tonal qualities of existence—an acknowledgment of order against a warp of irrationality. Like clouds, is it easier to float than struggle to define what strength might be found by structuring the world in frames of light and interconnection.
Portamento! you cry out when you see the merging of moments into a pattern more meaningful than the random or serendipitous. It is proof to you of the significance of it all—of life lived on scale with each note a sign that harmony is underlying, no matter what appearances might suggest, no matter what despair might seem more realistic.
I admire and covet your belief, your confidence in the rightness of the whole even if the parts, the painful, confusing, damaging segments, might seem volcanic—explosive for no reason except that the shifting forces beneath are invisible until felt.
Everything is for you a point of inflection as you wait to see and feel the harmony. Atmosphere and shadow—all at rest in insight and perception. Nothing in contradiction, all in balance only. Look to the clouds, you say, filled with light and the rippled echoes of birds calling as they begin their flight. In the crescendo of the birds’ wings, I call out to you, too. Portamento! Please don’t leave me behind.
In Mondrian’s Shadow
dance a beautiful fandango
and never let go of the
swirl of time and fire
blend with the night--
darkness protects the heart
from scrutiny and questioning
and in between the lines
instinct and need will match
the dream that speaks to the soul
trust the moonlight to spin a tale
trust the moment to speak the truth
dance away sorrow, regret
forget this is a road you know
and one that will call to you again
for all your longing not to lose
not to fail or sacrifice once more,
memory is a chalice offered
to the penitent who knows
no absolution
Christina Murphy lives and writes in a 100 year-old Arts and Crafts style house along the Ohio River. She continues to be amazed at how the Arts and Crafts movement found such artistic integrity (and solace) in straight lines and simple (yet complex) forms. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in a number of journals including, most recently, ABJECTIVE, A cappella Zoo, MiPOesias, Splash of Red, LITnIMAGE, Blue Fifth Review, POOL: A Journal of Poetry, and Counterexample Poetics. Her work has received two Editor’s Choice Awards and Special Mention for a Pushcart Prize.