Another Idea

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION FOR VIOLIN AND VIOLA
(for Hilary Hahn)

Not as if

your fingers 

cause a rise or fall

in the pitch of a note

to become a query 

or seek to caress 

or pinch a fret 

until certain sounds

begin to unpeel 

from two citrus bodies—

say a blood or

navel orange—

or also not 

as if a sound 

like a body of water  

rippling below 

a duvet of darkness

or a lilt of the beloved

in the leaps of a ghazal

lifting to question why

any blossom—

blood orange

or navel—might need 

to guide or guard 

the borders of intonation 

while other flowers 

seem to dream 

of crossing it with what

—when you toss 

your hair that way—

almost flickers 

like abandon,

but tonight perhaps

as if beyond 

the normal scales

—while orange petals

lick the air 

above a wick—

could lie a troubled clef

which even as it knows 

it shouldn’t

might denote 

a wisp of smoke

or appear to curl

into a silk scarf of sigh—

now pianissimo—

which could try

to warn a length—

suddenly bare—of neck

of what could lie 

beneath certain muscles 

which may or may not 

mimic a blood or 

navel orange’s

quiet tremble—

as if only until dawn,

as if only until taken

or mistaken for 

something which—

in this low light—

could rise or fall 

like a lip of chrysanthemum

on a ridge of collarbone.