A dear friend just forwarded me a delightful post of the theme from Mozart's Symphony in G Minor. I was surprised to read in the commentary that he composed it during a stressful time towards the end of his life. That was not what I heard. I heard energy, excitement, dancing. I guess I am particularly sensitive to the relationship between Fostering Harmony and Enabling Beauty. I find it difficult to write or draw if "all is not well" with me. The deaths of dear friends, human and canine, and the seeming mindless chaos surrounding our move from NC to Burr Ridge have declared that all has not been well with me for many months now. So I am cheating, by stealing a little bit of Harmony from history. While stumbling around looking for different and far more tedious documents related to the move, I stumbled across a series of compositions from more harmonic times. I may have shared some of them 10 or 15 years ago when I first wrote them. But hopefully enough time will have passed that you will have forgotten them!
I will adopt the haiku tradition of eliminating any title, letting the first line serve that function. I will insert numbers to separate the works as it isn't always clear where one stops and the next begins. So hopefully you will catch a bit of harmony from these golden oldies!
#1
Eyes,
with a single unschooled glance
reveal more than all your fabled
Thousand Words.
#2
One sustains harmony by
Retaining the capacity for
Spontaneous joy and
Innocent wonder while
Avoiding the twin sins of
Certainty and cynicism
#3
Insight, comparison defies,
As we are each uniquely wise.
It is such wisdom's task to find
A morsel sweet for humankind.
#4
You'd think these midnight muses
Might occasionally acknowledge
Tomorrow's obligations.
#5
You are the score on which is writ
The music of your soul and wit.
Your notes of laughter and of tears
Do match the music of the spheres.
#6
Softly I align, now realign,
Knees, shoulders, hips and toes,
Until all point straight to comfort;
As at 2 AM the Midnight Express
Roars through, late again,
But headed straight to Dreamland
Nonetheless.
#7
Life's purest diamonds
Mined of decades deep reflections
Wane once more invisible
Beneath the distracting tumbling stream
Of everyday.
#8
We spend our lives
Collecting truths
And sanding away deceptive certainty
Until what remains
Is the narrative that reveals
Both what we know
And what we have yet to learn.
#9
In every perfect moment
When the chord of you rings true
You rub your wings with angels
Immortal through and through.
#10
A lake perched high above the valley
Flirting with the timberline
Ringed by sighing pines
And raucous jays.
A tiny terrestrial Sea of Tranquility.
#11
When the storm spooks the herd
I seize my pen
To fling a corral
Around stampeding thoughts.
#12
Theses small wakeful hours
Rustle useless and petulant
Pens without paper
Repose without rest
#13
The predicted strong storms
Failed to materialize,
Leaving me jilted,
Exhilaration primed, then wilted.
#14
The first time for everything
is readily apparent;
While the last is resolved
only in death.
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