Through Screens

 [This is the great grandchild of the little white notebook. The old record player and the stack of randomly selected classical records have been replaced by a variety of Pandora playlists. The lists do favor instrumental and mellow designed for “nighttime, slowdown, go to sleep” used like lullabies - shut up, close your eyes, go to sleep.

If I were to decide why or how this work differs from works we might find in the little white notebook, I would point to six decades of reading all manner of books, of performing characters on stage, of lecturing to thousands of students in dozens of classrooms. To learning, in all those venues, to better link words to feelings and to more accurately share those words and feelings with those who might encounter them.

The technology - my iPad - allows me to blend those Pandora tracks with tracks from an app called  Naturespace: Holographic Audio. It has tracks with rain, distant trains, thunderstorms, etc., all comforting sounds I recall from my childhood, late at night, sans AC, through the screen in my bedroom window. So without further ado:]

Through Screens

They have the most magical powers.

Through their transforming mesh

Distant trains are sensed

Seeming near, but out of sight,

Revealed by rumbles on the rails.

Lonely whistles echoing

In and out of tunnels

That promise hidden mountains.

Quiet rain provides muted syncopation

Floating light above

The rumbling bass of thunder.

Tires hiss across blacktop

Muting memories of

The clop clop clop of shodden hooves

And the tired creak of gleaming carriages.

The gusts which dance before

A storm, strained through the screen,

Carry the incense of fresh mown meadows.

Turned earth in yearning simple gardens

Fulsome furrows in prouder fields.

The faint and teasing fragrance

Of brave first flowers, heads flung

Aloft into late March, early April.

I lie, eyes almost closed, but not.

Ears straining, wishing for the wisdom

Of the quiet little creatures of the night.

The masked raccoon, the scurrying mouse

The dirt-streaked mole and the tiny vole.

The barking dog and stealthy cat.

The much maligned, but so refined

Acute perceptive senses of the rat.

The seeming endless cicada’s call

Survives the grotesque first contact

With the misshapen musician, clinging

To rough bark, hidden in the dark.

Thick clouds roll across the moon

Causing us to hope again

That they foretell the magic of,

The majestic composition of,

The music of the night.