Looking to Music
Washed in a hot whirlpool, bathing
chin-deep in sloshing, bubbling waters,
I look ahead through sunlight
to sonatas and trios
of intimate surprise and satisfaction.
To live long would be to hear lots of music.
To live in health would be to swim often
and rest afterward in sunshine.
And I realize how much I’m like your father,
he swam & danced & loved the same music.
After a swim, like me now, he looked forward
to see you. He too craved Saturday
afternoon radio broadcasts of opera.
While dying, he sat in his den
listening to records. He sobbed
once alone to art songs and rhapsodies,
wept for his favorite, the Rosenkavalier.
How glad I am to be too busy for much music.
I can’t be distracted now from wife & child
by desire for music. If there is time,
there will be music.
William Considine__
____________________
Said Plain
I don't know how
Else to structure
Spontaneous effusions
As love said plain.
Do you hear now?
Within long confusions,
Across our rupture,
I sing love's refrain.
William Considine__
© Bob Heman: The Welcome
© Bob Heman: The Welcome
For the Drawer
I could not confess any faster,
In retrospect,
How proud I felt to master
Strong feelings with intellect.
It seemed a brilliant twist: I'll
Turn the form up-ended,
To finish with love's denial,
With punishing force pretended.
Then, it made ironic sense.
The form found wit in wordplay.
But after so long a silence,
Words come to mean what they say.
Not giving then, I shared no game.
To show it now would lay false blame.
William Considine__
___________________
A Fantasy
Those few occasions linger.
An honest desire seizes
Untouched details: her slim fingers
On a cigarette, her bare knees.
Each remembered glance
Can show she loved me.
I made myself a lost romance.
Sometimes, I play saxophone
Through small, rapt rooms of my mind
Into hers. In a musical moan,
She knows. Meeting, we are kind
In the confusion of our eyes.
- But I never took the chance.
The unsaid dies in rich sighs.
I made myself a lost romance.
William Considine__
Full Moon
The full white moon,
Drunk with so many
Memories of love,
Twists its round mouth
And howls a loony tune.
“O humans of the dark
Blue planet, facing skies!
Your small white eyes
Gleam like so many
Stars radiating into stark,
Near nothing space
A faded Being’s final trace.
The light returning from your eyes
Is fire of the love
God left at your thighs.”
Sky-gazing men and women,
Seduced through the open
Moaning of the moon
- “O,” says the big face
In a cosmic cartoon –
Feel touched by grace
Implicit in our sense of place.
Hugging old confusions
As our own dear conclusions,
Spinning dizzy dreams
In dim and mixed-up scenes,
Jilted, faithful lovers croon
To shadows on a sky balloon.
William Considine__
____________________
We Shared a Quilt
We shared a quilt,
A lightweight summer quilt
Made of silk, soft and smooth.
It draped our embraces, flowed
Over every contour.
An open window
Let a breeze pass over us.
By late September,
Air cold, wind
Blustering and harsh,
The quilt was too light.
A cotton comforter
Covered us with bulk and
Weight, a bulwark against
Airborne elements,
Our envelope,
Our slot we fit within.
For a few weeks,
We kept the window open
A crack,
Then closed it tight.
Under a heavier quilt,
We lay together to sleep
Close all the nights of
Months through winter.
When you must go
Again, to the border
Problems or beyond,
Our quilts are still here,
Ready for your return.
William Considine__
