Star Memory

…in the flute’s haunting, birdlike notes, the god breathes on the listener and infinite and finite are momentarily experienced as one.

— The Book of Symbols (Taschen, 2010), p.664

Tonight in a city parking lot,
harried by a frantic life,
I trace the note beyond
a filigree of leaves
to a silhouette, flute in hands,
embraced by warm light.
Pied piper soothes.

…

Silver notes ride
rays of moonlight,
glisten on dew damp leaves,
cross dark shadows eyeless,
summon us.
Phantom figures, we leave campfires,
duck branches,
wend our way,
drawn by
the pull,
as strong as the tides,
to the source:
a lone figure
standing on moist earth.

…

Under a canopy of reverence
a child at the altar
summons those same silver notes;
in the rear, unseen,
I support the melody circling higher to the rafters.
Worshipers, surprised by unrehearsed harmony,
seized by the eternal,
know sacred space,

…

Star memory twinkles bright.

Alexandra Burroughs, a retired English teacher, grew up in the Catskill Mountains. She now lives beside Williamson Creek, where she is a member of the Wordsmiths of Transylvania County critique group. Bedtime Story and Other Poems was published in 2004. Her poems have also appeared in The Lucidity Poetry Journal, The Cove Rincon, and in the anthologies, Out of Our Hearts and Minds and Clothes Lines.

About Star Memory—In “Star Memory,” I attempted to capture the uncanny way we can feel the breath of God upon us, in the most ordinary places and times, through the clear notes of a flute. Immediately we are filled with the wonder, beauty, and terror of the unknown, the truth of our existence.