wishes for sons, by Lucille Clifton

Hauntings

Lecture

The Whistle, by Kathy Mangan
Ciprian Porumbescu - Ballad for Violin and Piano You could whistle me home from anywhere in the neighborhood; avenues away, I’d pick out your clear, alternating pair of notes, the signal to quit my child’s play and run back to our house for supper, or a Saturday trip to the hardware store. Unthrottled, wavering in the upper reaches, your trilled summons traveled farther than our few blocks. I’ve learned too, how your heart’s radius extends, though its beat has stopped. Still, some days a sudden fear darts through me, whether it’s my own city street I h

The insidious sound of the violin
A divinely charmed .........................snake .......................................Sent to coil ......................................................around heart .......................................................................and soul ..................................................................................And leave ............................................

Finding What You Didn't Lose, by John Fox
for M. E.Grieg - Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.16, III with Arthur Rubinstein (1975) When someone deeply listens to you it is like holding out a dented cup you've had since childhood and watching it fill up with cold, fresh water. When it balances on top of the brim, you are understood. When it overflows and touches your skin, you are loved. When someone deeply listens to you, the room where you stay starts a new life and the place where you wrote your first poem begins to glow in your mind's eye. It is as if gold has

Dangerous Prayers, by Regina Sara Ryan
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto No. 1, III with Artur Rubinstein Deliver us, O Truth, O Love, from quiet prayer from polite and politically correct language, from appropriate gesture and form and whatever else we think we must put forth to invoke or to praise You. Let us instead pray dangerously – wantonly, lustily, passionately. Let us demand with every ounce of our strength, let us storm the gates of heaven, let us shake up ourselves and our plaster saints from the sleep of years. Let us pray dangerously. Let us throw ourselves from the top of the tower, let u

The Shell, by David Whyte
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 Allegro moderato part I, with Itzhak Perlman An open sandy shell on the beach empty but beautiful like a memory of a protected previous self. The most difficult griefs ones in which we slowly open to a larger sea, a grander sweep that washes all our elements apart. So strange the way we are larger in grief than we imagined we deserved or could claim and when loss floods into us like the long darkness it is and the old nurtured hope is drowned again