I did not think I was a Song, not in little school, but age 13, a storm hit our bay and the sand went white in the sun that finally came out, that day in the silence, with light falling like rain in my arms and bare feet running out to meet a day without a storm, half our tourist village had lost their boats, oh more than half: there were dead bird and bits of roof in flattened grass clump across from our house with the casurina trees soft green in mid morning, that time I began to feel like a Song;

there are many kinds of Songs, I learned that, growing up in different coasts in our Peninsula, twice on a mountain, a gulf and a plateau, you saw beauty. It entered your minuscule existence, in notes, in clefs..

another time I saw we were Songs was after college and we were on a threshold, it went a quiet bizarre: life was older, you had decisions and jobs to do all by yourself, it felt like a storm, you waited for the sun to come out, and it did now and then and you were a Rhyme sometimes, a Limerick, a Duet with the winds in your back in your sail, in waves that took you ashore, or slammed you atop high cliff, I loved being that Song. It was war and love and the chaos of finding Peace in gutters and altars and other places like Momma Maye’s prayers how she whispered soft at God like He was her personal Dad, it got to me, her raw voice ~ an earth’s womb hurting. She prayed, she muttered and scolded demons and disease. When Momna Maye died she had this happy face like an Emoji I’m telling you, if she could sing she would’ve but she couldn’t, except rasp a quiet goodbye like it was the best thing, I envied her Song and found it in few faces, oh sometimes in my own inability to be strong. I pray when I can, and I can’t: it isn’t traditional, it’s like a pulse. Breath. A song.

So yea I loved finding Songs in unusual spaces. If you’ve lived you’ll know what I mean. You are Lyrics with no words, Tunes with no bar, you go high and low, you are Mezzo and a Quartet often, depending on who/ what is with you in that Pitch.

Life’s a Song.

Once we were in a boat and the sea was a beautiful dragon, she sailed us out into the night, it was a clear moon. My Father was there, he was fearless and we were a bunch of friends – I should’ve been scared, I was sea sick as hell, but when you’re on the shoulder of a wave and the Light swims smaller lights in the water at your hull, you’re a Song you do not forget…

and you do not forget that in a desert and there’s no water there anymore, but there’s the sea in your bones, its Crescendo rising enough to remind you of who you are, where your are…and sometimes you’ll know why…

you wait, you listen, your ears own that sound, you cannot grow away from what is in the veins of your bones- from what is in the toes of your dance, in the choir of your silence…

how d’you stop what you are in the momentum of your journey… it rocks- lulls -pulls- takes you with it, you are It, you are one in 7 billion songs, yes, yes, you… I..we a Song,

the more I think of it the more I think of it

…

our tone, our voice… what must it sound like when we sing together, to see/ experience notes together on one page..

It would terrify fear itself,

it would kill death, it could stalk our stalkers, invade invasion, blind blindness, deafen deafness…

ah we do sing, often together.

We do not know it, often we do. I am a Song, so are you. Shhhhh listen. Aren’t we good together.

***

@raylarn

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