AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS ADAGIO FOR VIOLIN AND VIOLA
(for Hilary Hahn)
Not unlike the way
twin fingers might crave
sliding down a neck—
to bend a pitch—
until a layer
of uncertainty
begins to merge
two citrus bodies—
say a blood or
navel orange—
in a still life.
And yet not a ‘sound’
as in a long passage
connecting two bodies
of water below
a duvet of darkness
or as waves
of intonation from
red carnation lips
making the leaps
of a ghazal
into the sea
of a secret which
—when you toss
your hair that way—
seems to ripple like
what in a lower light
could be called
—for now—
abandon.
But a sound
of fingers
on taut strings—
while orange petals
warm the air
above the wisp
of a wick—
as if any two
wooden bodies
might share a note
—or anything
hand drawn—
to inscribe us close
to a Trouble Clef
where a silkening seems
to blend us into
one long scarf of sigh
—almost pianissimo
as freshly cut violets—
or perhaps reaches
beneath a bare
strip of thigh
that begins to ripple
with the blood
or navel orange’s
silent ache—
as if only until dawn,
as if only until
the filaments
feel prone to rise or fall
as a brush of red incarnate
on a stretch of open neck.
