They glowed like sumptuous bodies

lazing along a horizon, curvaceous,

heartstrings stilled from neck to belly

as they awaited your hands.

Violins wounded and worn out

were lain on the table, spruce or willow

parted from maple, ebony fingerboard set aside.

Burnished by use, flame and curl of grainings

brightened in a small pool of yellow light.

I handed you tools that pried, filed, shaved,

smoothed, fragile curlicues falling,

glue pot bubbling its tangy stink.

Your voice pianissimo, calando, as always

now more so as you split, rejoined wood

tenderly, and through thickened air it all

spread to me, the longing for symmetry of beauty,

its promise of more, all emptiness resonant

with respect for wonder,

and deft measures of love.

Tonight I rest inside this poem, watch trees,

maples shaking leaves as percussion,

pines gathering notes of blue shadow,

willows draping skirts for dancing.

The crickets call me closer to twilight.

And I know you were not satisfied

with hours of exquisite work, nor

your good, honest music making

nor the lives of your children of whom

you knew far less yet expected much more

but I tell you these trees are yet singing,

a timbre of richness and strength of the wood

and it takes hold of me as sudden light in

this deep forest, its vibrancy a sound post

for spirit, life’s movements a vibration

I claim, hum, can sing in kind solitude.

They are made of every song you taught me

and every song I did not share.

The bodies of trees ever pull me,

a living offering of grace,

their sacrifices never forgotten