February 6th: How to Listen to the Flautist

February 6^th:  How to Listen to the Flautist: A Conversation I Had 

It was looking up at something farther off

than people could see, an important scene

acted in stone for little selves

at the flute end of consequences.

                                                William Stafford

                                                At the Bomb Testing Site

I just, listen, it’s the pushing into it with my finger

first, that soft wind escaping after the flautist's low

and stay and wait lifted each note and key

and gave me the precis, her allusion of it all: listen

don’t you want the softness of a trust like that?

In the whole orchestra it's you and the musician

and after some crowd parting (which looking

back afterwards is every touch since the curtain

every bit of longing and lost along the trail

of thought of practice of warm-up breath

and the weight of the wait of it) two in the globe

green-globe sea, a belief in the power of eight

fingers and two thumbs, of hands holding

the instrument, of the muscle under the bicept

of knowing why each note and when each note

and more to want to play not just to the ear

though maybe in part maybe it begins there

but the skin, the hair and skin of the listener

who at last at long last has surrendered

and raises up to the flute end of breath a sigh

a staying and a brief (only on the upper lip) rain.