Another old one…
In the gather and the brush of people
I keep my eyes low, flicking glances.
I would rather not speak, just now-
but the colors!
Each vocal tone richly mixing,
rising in laughter, the gentle bass crescendo in the back left row
and the woman with that pure soprano, in strangely green pants!
Someone, an alto, behind me to the right
has a looser sense of beat and her notes tend to hang into the first breath
of each ordained rest, her voice a little screechy.
I smile, wondering what I really sound like
outside the warm insulation of bloodlines vibrating through my bones
(disembodied, my small notes bouncing off the aluminum folding chairs).
“Requiem Aeternam Deo”: this is a difficult one.
The mutterings between songs change to humming,
those who can read music forging ahead,
hammering out the slight shift from sharp to natural,
curbing the edge of sound into a disciplined staccato of eighth notes,
wincing loudly for the rest of us
when we stampede, bellowing,
over the hallowed ground of some somber intended pianissimo.
