Musical Autobiography

I wonder what it would be like to write a musical autobiography? Just to think about the music you grew up hearing, even before you could choose what you listened to....And what were your earliest memories of music playing around you...And what you think is in your "musical DNA"? Also, then, what music defined the formative years or important eras of your life? What kind of music has become your favorite now? What are some of your anthems? This could be interesting exercise....maybe I'll do it.

Lake Evening

I passed the Muslim women's tree--

its shade solid and inviting,

then stopped to watch a solitary egret

hunting in the shallows.

Where the sun had been,

the sky was the color of pale pink lemonade,

and to the east, barely half a moon

had been etched in the blue glass sky.

A steady breeze carried the scent of

moist earth and lush green grasses
and warm green lake water.

I thought of all the other solitary walks

I'd taken,
and I was glad I went.

Blackberries

Behind half a concrete wall,

just beyond a stack of timbers,

an explosion of blackberry bushes

prayed for us to deliver them of their fruit.

In the light of dusk,

heavy black globes hung

under their own sweet weight,

while above them the reds and pinks

waited in the wings for their debut.

Waist high canes, reared in humid black dirt,

transplanted when the old gardener died

to an urban plot they share with mullein stalks,

seem to thrive in this clay and mulch.

Fresh welcome breeze sifted through

the thorny courtyard

as we stood with stained fingers

and tasted the sweetness of the night.

My daughter's constellations

Sleeping in her old room,
I discover on the ceiling
a galaxy from her childhood.

I try to make out the celestial system

of glow-in-the-dark stars,

to guess what she was thinking

when she created her own astronomy.

I thought I saw the constellations

of endangered birds and rainforest frogs

she loved when she was nine,

a flute-playing nymph dancing

near the orb of Chinese paper

that forms her sun.

Beyond that, I can't

discern the pictures in her sky.

Her most private planets

are only visible through

a telescope she took with her,

the lens of her own heart.

I have to be content

with this, and only this...

points of light reaching me now

from her distant past.