There was always music

In my mother’s childhood home

Arriving with a fiery taste

In the air circling the crystal set

Her grandfather had built

Which sizzled with arias from New York

Orchestras in Chicago and Pittsburgh

And static almost all the time

Accompanying the syncopation

Of her father’s dancing feet.

Operas and symphonies spun

Out their magic lure

From treasured 78rmp records

Laid carefully beneath a needle

To release the secrets

Hidden in their grooves.

The music shared the room

With the smell of rosin

On the bow of her brother’s violin,

Her grandad’s fiddle,

Her father’s mandolin.

Her own fingers on piano keys,

Or her mother’s so gentle touch

Moving a piano’s hammers

Striking perfectly tuned strings

Painting the air with melody

But what is it called when creatures

On this earth curl and sleep, when

Shadows of moons we don’t know

Brush across our faces?

—“Naming of the Heartbeats” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

There are moons we do not know

Distanced across space.

Do these unseen mysteries

Send their shadows outward

Beyond their limited orbits

Into the world of my room

Trailing the faintest touch

Of awareness, something drifting

Over my face to alter

The inner tides within my dreams?

Once upon a time

My hair rippled down my back

Waves that glistened in the sun

That swung from side to side

With the flippancy of youth.

Today in my mirror I see only

The lank and sparce remains.

This is not my hair, my mane.

This is a charade

A dastardly trick played by time.

My barrettes no longer strain

to hold my heavy tresses. Instead

they slip, fall away and are lost.

Ribbons, too, fail to stay in place.

Scarves may hide but not replace

The thick richness of my yesteryears.

Today in my mirror I see only

The lank and sparce remains.

This is not my hair, my mane.

This is a charade,

A dastardly trick played by time.

(An Author Writes to the Character She Created)

I remember you,

Anneke,

Though you lived

For only one evening

And the length

Of one diary page

Filed with my schoolwork.

Little Bo Peep, all forlorn

Has lost her sheep.

“They are gone,” she moans.

Little Bo Peep do not mourn

“But they are gone,” she repeats.

“All my sheep.

My beautiful sheep.”

Do not mourn Bo Peep

Do not fret and weep

For they will again come home.

No longer will you wait alone.

Little Bo Peep all forlorn

Do not weep and do not mourn,

“They are gone, gone,” she repeats,

“All my sheep, my beautiful sheep.”

From their roving they return, coming home

Beneath the darkening vast blue dome.

Round and round Bo Peep they wind.

Little Bo Peep no longer is forlorn.

No longer will she mourn,

“Gone, gone

My sheep are gone,

All my sheep, by beautiful sheep.”