Music

      One of the gifts of my current hearing aids is syncing with my smart phone. This makes telephone conversations enjoyable. Through the COVID pandemic much of my people connection has been via the phone. 

    Another gift of that syncing between aids and phone is the access to music. Music in this connection is better than if I were hearing the music played in person. When I tune to music times slips away. Last night I spent time learning about Hardanger fiddles and listening to music played on that Norwegian instrument.

   This poem captures the melancholy I often experience listening to music.

Music
by Anne Porter

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother’s piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold
And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying
Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country
I’ve never understood
Why this is so
But there’s an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow
For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest
And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country
We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams
And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows
Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

Takk for alt,

Al

              Today's random: "Joanne's piano" at Grace University Lutheran.