LOST SONGS and SOLOIST by Jennifer Wenn

ost Songs

By Jennifer Wenn

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful

is the piece of God that is inside each of us

Mary Oliver, “Franz Marc’s Blue Horses”

Once I wrote songs,

was young and didn’t know any better,

aspired to an unreachable fantasy,

to a person I couldn’t then be.

Immature fragile tunes

and gossamer words

soon lost in a cacophony

of mocking laughter from

without and within,

drowned out by blasts of

seriousness reasonableness conformity,

naïve notes distorted into an

unending metronomic drumbeat of

analytics and logic and practicality,

the songs shattered, scattered on the winds

of uncounted delicate melodies

never given voice, throats and souls

strangled by fear and acquiescence.

Is that the end? Divine spark forever

sublimated or smothered? Sometimes.

But maybe, a lifetime later,

the quixotic urge returns unbidden,

the primordial quest for beauty reborn,

habit and convention cast aside

and the fragments of long-ago dreams

reforged with hard-won tools,

perhaps, one autumn day, to sound a

hopeful transfigured echo of long-lost songs.

Soloist

The leader counts in, tones burst forth

like spring flowers in fast forward,

swirling, linking, dissolving, reforming,

sculpting a cathedral ephemeral,

bass crypt, tenor and alto vaulting,

soaring soprano filigree.

Moment impending, the soloist rises,

flooded by anticipatory tension,

hoping, yet confident,

fusing with the music.

Space created as cathedral

modulates to safety net,

alone, but not, the solo begins,

slowly at first, then building, soaring,

borne up by a nurturing tide

surging through the room,

pulling threads of the ineffable

from spirit’s core and weaving

a glorious sonic tapestry

above and beyond, transporting

all to rapturous realms unseen.

Vision complete, the soloist eases down,

melding, reharmonizing. Consummation

achieved, physical sounds cease,

the enchantment echoing still.

Jennifer Wenn is a trans-identified writer and speaker from London, Ontario. Her first poetry chapbook, A Song of Milestones, has been published by Harmonia Press (an imprint of Beliveau Books). She has also written From Adversity to Accomplishment, a family and social history; and published poetry in Beliveau Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Watchyourhead, Open Minds Quarterly, Tuck Magazine, Synaeresis, Big Pond Rumours, the League of Canadian Poets Fresh Voices, Wordsfestzine, and the anthologies Dénouement and Things That Matter. She is also the proud parent of two adult children. Visit her website here.

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