Echoes No.8: Our Opened Hearts

Today is just an ordinary Tuesday, in Fall, partly bright and partly dark. The wind rips leaves from their branches before their time to fall, and they paint the lawn red, yellow and gold. I rake the leaves into piles: they resemble dull fires that need to be fed by fresh flames. Later, inside I play Mozart. His orchestra of twenty-four musicians is a crystal sky from which the solo violin descends into melody and the solo viola adds harmony. It is a poised and steady beauty which only human beings create. For thirty minutes I neither think nor reason. Even memory stops as "allegro, " "andante, " and "presto" rhythms replace the procession of time. Thoughts and memory return to my refreshed mind, both focus on you and your thoughts and memory as you wander across your "paradise" island. I see you standing on an elevation, looking over land and sea, your face upturned to receive the light, your arms outspread to embrace the air. Everywhere you go the island is alive and responds to your presence. It is a mysterious union, you are both witness and participant. Person and place, Baharak and island are a single reality. (This poem is a response to two landscapes, for me it is southern Minnesota, for Baharak it is an island in the Persian Gulf. The music of Mozart is his luminous masterpiece, SINFONIA CONCERTANTE FOR VIOLIN, VIOLA & ORCHESTRA, performed by Gidon Kremer, Ula Ulijona and Kremerata Baltica.)