A New Beginning

My old computer, Fitzwilliam, died. We won't go into the details of his death, let's just say that it involved tequila. So sad. Anyway, my papa came to town this week and we bought a new computer. I've named this one Fitzwilliam the Second. In honor of Fitzwilliam the second, I am hereby going to change the format of this little blog that nobody reads. I am now going to share with the Internet the poems, passages and quotes that speak to me on that particular day.

Today, I share a fantastic poem by Christine Rhein.

TUNING

I try to tune out the boom! boom! boom!

from the shooting range two miles from my house,

and think of the people who live next door

to the targets, or in the din of London and Berlin

where nightingales now sing fourteen decibels louder

to be heard by mates, quintupling the pressure

in their lungs. I've never heard a nightingale,

but I know noise comes from nausea, and bulls-

eye names the goal for some blurry desire.

Bullseye is a band in Norway playing gung-ho rock and roll,

like the kid down the street whose car speakers rumble

through his closed windows and mine,

drums pummeling our insides.  If I told him I once hiked

among redwoods, heard ghostly calls in the stillness,

branches somewhere in the canopy sky

moaning as they swayed, would he say Cool

or Whatever, the way my sons have mumbled it,

intending that I shouldn't--or maybe should--hear,

all talk target practice, ricochet and sashay, headache 

and heartache, duck and cover.  In a fable, Lion realizes

too late his vulnerability, the tunnel of his ear,

tiny Mosquito zooming in.  Out beyond Pluto, Voyager's

golden disc offers mud pots, thunder, footsteps,

a Brandenburg Concerto and Johnny B. Goode.

Was the very first song a hum or a shout, laughter

or weeping?  When my friend, at forty, praised 

her cochlear implants, she complained about work,

the ringing office phones--How do people concentrate?

I consider her vacations--wind surfing, rock climbing,

marathons--how different now that she hears

each splash and scrape, the huh of heavy exhalation.

I wish I could adorn my ears the way warriors in India did,

with metallic green beetle wings, an iridescent

clacking and tinkling at the Feast of Courage.  Imagine

if we could hear bread rising, dew forming, the budding 

of raspberries, the tear of a cocoon, a minnow's pulse,

our own cells growing, dying.  When my husband

kisses my ear, I love the swoosh, the quiver, his breath

sand driven by wind, my whispered name.