Echoes No.8: Our Opened Hearts Poem by Daniel Brick

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.)