February 7: Symphony No. 25

First flakes start to fall.

Mozart symphony playing

while the cat sleeps on.

August 28: Music

Red squirrel sputters,

back-beat to music blaring

at the mini golf course.

August 17: Diana Krall

It makes me happy

to hear on the radio

"Cry Me a River."

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October 8: In tune

Long drive alone in the dark,

all my heartaches

on the damn radio.

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October 13: The randomness of memory

This poem, from a moment this morning...

Phrases from a song

last heard playing in a bar

this past summer.

 

...leads to this one, from a moment in August:

 

Night out by myself

on the streets of Old Quebec,

happy observer.

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August 4: Music before sunset

Blues on the stereo.

Rich, between-storms light,

the hint of a rainbow.

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July 28: Monhegan House nocturne

A bat flies over!

Strumming guitar, waves' backbeat

lull us to sleep.

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June 4: Driving home

perfect evening light
dance music shaking the car
three black cows grazing

May 1: Frog pond

My husband and I are spending the weekend at the Schoodic Institute, part of Acadia National Park in Down East Maine. This afternoon before dinner we walked through spruce woods to a small pond filled with singing frogs. They quieted when we showed up but eventually started up again, enveloping us in a music so loud we could feel the sound vibrate in our jaw bones. Our ears hurt by the time we left. Overhead, a raven chortled, used to it all.

 

Old frog pond--

we wait long enough

for the chorus to resume.

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January 17: Joy in unexpected places

In the grocery aisle--

pop song on the sound system,

old man sings along.

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October 16: Pears

Standards on the radio,
rain falling hard--
the middle of my life.

August 13: Flood warnings

Flash flood warning--
heavy rain on the car roof
Mozart interrupted

November 29: Mozart on the radio

For my workout high

and this winter-blue sky,

Mozart sounds just right.

October 23: Pandora

Listening to Pandora Internet Radio while at work...

Ah, this song,

and those last red leaves.

I get nothing done.

June 19: Office music

Turn off Pandora.
A robin shares his music
all afternoon.

March 5: One of those songs

Driving home after dinner with friends in Rockland, listening to a "slow dance" mix CD recently sent to me by a DJ friend. A song came on that was one of my favorites back in grad school over 20 years ago: "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaak. I used to put it on repeat and lie on the floor of my apartment while it played over and over, the plaintive guitar and his mellow croon touching the sensitive poet's soul that I was nurturing with both my MFA studies and a complex relationship I was in at the time.

Listening to it now made me think how as I've gotten older I don't respond to music as viscerally as in the high-emotion era of my youth living out those moments when, as musician Ani DiFranco sang, "Every pop song on the radio was suddenly speaking to me..."* So I turned it up loud and sang along as I drove the familiar streets home, recalling the exquisite, bittersweet angst of my mid-20s as I did so.

This song takes me back.
Ah, to be 24 again.
And yet so grateful I'm not.


* Lyrics from another old favorite, her song "Superhero," released in 1996

November 9: At the bank

Funny the places where we're suddenly struck with happiness. Today, waiting at the bank, having just engaged in a friendly conversation about geese with a bank employee I know, I hear a song I like playing over the sound system. I'm just standing there, smiling, waiting for the teller to finish the deposits. And it hits me: in this moment, right now, I'm happy.

Touchstone for joy
closer than we realize.
Radio song. Bird's flight.

August 17: Rider on the storm

Late night, caffeinated drive to Portland through, first, torrential hail, then a straight downpour, all mixed with ground fog, thunder and lightning the whole way, and one deer crossing the road.

Turn up the music
to drown out the sound of hail
drumming on the car.

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August 12: Sunday morning

Another quiet, misty morning on the coast of Maine, one of those mornings when I just want to stay in bed and listen to the noises of the neighborhood awakening...

Wakened by ospreys,

neighbor's singing and strumming.

Now, "shh" of rainfall. 

April 22: Carmina Burana

My husband and I experienced a performance of "Carmina Burana" performed by the USM Concert Band and Chorus in Portland this afternoon--the perfect way to spend a rainy Earth Day. This stirring piece of music was composed by Carl Orff in the 1930s, based on a set of 13th century secular German poems collected in 1847 by Johann Andreas Schmeller (according to my program)--a veritable palimpsest of artistic traditions.
 
While I was familiar with the intro piece (O Fortuna) from its use in a significant scene in one of my favorite movies, "Excalibur," I had no idea that that was just a small part of a 25-part cantata focused on the lusty energies of spring, eating and drinking in a tavern, and, well, sex. Apparently those 13th century poems were written by defrocked monks.
 
Our enjoyment was enhanced by a translation included in the program, which helped us figure out that the tenor soloist's only part was a song about being a roasted swan about to be eaten. He had a beautiful voice--as did all three soloists--so this seemed a bit unfair, but perhaps singing the part of the cooked swan in "Carmina Burana" is considered a plum role in the voice performance world.
 
Spring's glory rides in
on percussion crescendos,
a chorus of love.