Usually when I am performing in an opera, I don’t find much time, if any, to write. But the past few weeks I have come up with a few rough drafts that I am pleased with and I am looking forward to fleshing them out more when the show is over. I have noticed lots of musical metaphors working into my writing, no doubt because of the show. Here is another….

Finale

Your tune is hiding behind my lips
melodious and achingly sweet
like the tremulous voice of a cello
or the feel of your skin beneath my hands
velvet and warm

I part my lips and sing
what we have written for each other
into your open and waiting mouth.

This autumn in Pittsburgh
fell into a complicated melody
and the listening ear rests itself
against the warm breath of poetry

While walking near the rivers,
the water littered with misspent words
and the colored petals of flowers
that passed away into the night

Somehow all the brown zones
of the dying industrial age
became a love song
of empty lots with arms outstretched

The heart still beats
even as the machinery rusts
disintegrates from disuse.
Angels and crickets whisper

their voices lifting
and the thread is followed
into a spiral of color and sound
and I am still translating.