The reed at her lips, the strings in his hand,
how making music resembles making love
in its energy and rhythm, the listening and watching,
eyes and mind in tune, the flirtation, crescendo,
the peak, the ecstasy, the release into joy
of two bodies, two forms in sacred symmetry, harmonious elegance,
encased in their oblivious beauty, their world only sound,
produced by mouths and by fingers, by flesh and breath,
let me follow your phrase
to that place where the notes lead me,
tumbling forth, as if by some divine plan,
let me meet you in that place,
that trembling triad, that vibrating fifth,
that cavern of delight,
take me to the cliff, throw me over its precipice,
your suspension dripping from my bow,
embrace me with your voice,
with your body of wood, of string,
we need to touch each other
with skin, with sound,
gentle, tender, then fierce and enflamed,
our love cascading in a flourish of sixteenths
releasing into euphoric unison,
we make love in cathedrals,
in classrooms and concert halls, bars and bedrooms,
discipline coupled with abandon,
math and poetry, numbers and hysteria,
an impassioned merging, blending our timbres,
give me your tongue and your bliss,
so I know not myself, or you,
or any other than this dance of delirium,
we follow like hypnotic monks to the altar,
blindly and without knowing our purpose,
drawn toward it as the flame,
as the sea, the cross, as the crimson sun,
a manifestation of life’s energy,
of our love for all that is,
a celebration of our own beauty,
the man and the woman,
of the rapture of God, of all of it,
of citrus sweat and crushed violets,
of bruised petals and black waters,
of the sparrow interlacing with clouds,
spirit blown from our center,
sculpted by hands, by mouths, by breath
falling on the world’s ears
mildly as the creek’s gurgling legato,
as the locust’s leaflets fluttering in autumn descent,
or abruptly as an arrow piercing flesh with stinging staccato,
it births new life, potent and dangerous,
delightful and delirious,
for a moment not held back by fear, by shame,
by doubt which colors our prosaic lives,
we may for once be present, and fall into a poem,
breathe through it, this ecstasy of minutes,
mind sharp as fire, yet a blurring of forms, of limbs,
voices aching like gulls, roaring as the sea,
the body knows what to do, where to go,
the music lives in our muscles and our minds,
my voice swells with my blood, with yours,
with our blue rapture.
My heart—make love, make music,
ravish me with those twelve tones,
for soon we will be dead
and buried in the solid and silent earth.
-- Shann Palmer Poetry Contest Finalist, published in Richmond Magazine, Sept. 2021
painting by Gottlieb