Music – Like Poetry

This is from my chapter on music in my Intermission Poetry collection.

I love the outdoors and used to spend my childhood hiking through canyons and rocky plateaus, running down gently rolling hills, or hanging out on the edge of a cliff after exploring a small cave.  It was nice growing up backed up to a national park.   It made life seem like a fairy tale and unreal.  My imagination would go wild and I’d write silly stories about worlds that grew outward.

Once I grew up and fell smack dab into reality.  I realized the real world is harsh.  I learned it can move slow and boring and sometimes you simply move through the motions without paying attention.  You can lose yourself in the hopeless redundancy.

But don’t.

Learn to stop and live.  Love the people in your world like their lives matter because in the end that is the only worthy part of a life.  The ones you love and the way you love.  Emotions, feelings and moments move quickly.  People need you present.  You need to be present in the world or it does simply move without you. 

I can be selfish with my time and my life.  My time gets shorter and shorter, and others will see me less and less.  That’s when I have to remember to slow down and take it all in.

Slow down and just listen… to the music in the background.  Slow down and take it in.

In the Background – Music

Music has always played in the background

Walking down a street, stopping to listen

All the sounds surrounded once I stopped

Looked to the sky to see clouds move and dance

Unrealized pieces to a tune that changes with every movement

Earth spins out a song every single second

Is it three/four or four/four, or two to eight, maybe sixteen, and then back again

Wandered down a road I’d never seen before

Listened to it sing a song I’ve heard before

On replay it sounds pretty good in the background

Then floated down a river

Just to play its instrument

Following every note playing slowly

Then rapidly, across rocks and plants, and life

Just to hear it in the background

Climbed up a  mountain

Heard the wind say lyrics written that morning, or ages ago

But the song was sweeter on the breeze

My body fell down pushed over to tears

To the sound roiling across my ears

Rolled to the bottom landing in a glen

Smelled every succulent within

From flowers to grass to barks of unknown trees

Listened to them sing

To the music in the background

The world plays music with slow and melancholy movement

Fasten the pace and it violently booms in a crescendo

You realize it was a passing storm

That will soon slow again to that common refrain

Of music in the background

 

Have a great day of seeking and searching! 🙂

Goodnight Gracie! 🙂 ❤