AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION FOR VIOLIN AND VIOLA
(for Hilary Hahn)
Not as if
your fingers
never cause
a rise or fall
in pitch
to slide into a query
or ever fail to caress
or pinch a fret
until certain sounds
begin to unpeel
from two citrus bodies—
say a blood or
navel orange—
and also not
as if a sound
like a body of water
might ripple below
a duvet of darkness
or a lilt of the beloved
in the leaps of a ghazal
may lift to question why
any blossom—
blood orange
or navel—might need
to guide or guard
the borders of intonation
while other flowers
move to bloom
alongside the sea
of a secret which
—when you toss
your hair that way—
almost flickers
like abandon,
but perhaps,
perhaps just once
as if somehow
beyond the usual scale
—while orange petals
wave the air
above a wick—
doesn’t sit
a Trouble Clef
which even as it knows
it shouldn’t
begins to denote
a wisp of smoke
or begins to curl
into a silk scarf of sigh—
pianissimo here—if only
to warn a length—
now bare—of neck
of what often lies
beneath certain muscles
which may or may not
mimic a blood or
navel orange’s
silent tremble—
as if only until dawn,
as if only until taken
or mistaken for
something which—
in this failing light—
could rise or fall
like a lip of chrysanthemum
on a ridge of collarbone.
