Poetry

Music : Are you here?

by

Leslie Cohen

are you here?

listening to the musics that surround you
reclining in your ringside seat
right at center stage
where the cattle sing their arias
across the evening fields,
in a lower tonal scale

and have you listened long enough
to recognize each soloist
as the bovine basses, baritones
echo through your repose?

and the other musics, too –
the sputtering of passing tractors,
the swish of autos on the nearby road

the wail of the wind through the trees at night,
the birds at every hour, every season,
the rain and hail of winter's storms.

Oh my music lover!
Do you enjoy their music?
Are you here?

Or have you, on your journey
through endless time and space,
surpassed the speed of sound -
and thus been transformed, yourself,
into music?

Oh my music lover!
if only music was enough, if only love was enough
to sustain you through the agony of your illness
then we would be listening together,

Or are we listening together?
are you listening? Are you here?