Poetry Friday round-up is with Catherine at Reading to the Core
Brenda Davis Harsham posted a ten word prompt in Laura Shovan’s Facebook Project (which is currently open for new members). The words came from an article in The New York Times about Maria Callas and the opera Tosca. I sent it to my mother who is a musician and huge fan of opera. I asked her, “Did I ever see Tosca?” She responded that she had taken me as a child.
I listened to the recordings embedded in the online article, but nothing sounded too familiar. I did not inherit the same love of opera, I’m afraid.
But the article, the email conversation with Mom, and the ten words that Brenda selected led me to this poem:
My mother took me to see Tosca
when I was too young
to know tragedy.I listened with ears of youth
tuning in to the crazy chords
that flowed in and out
like murmuring birds.How fragile a single soprano note
hangs on a nightingale’s wing.
The song can wake you
alive to wonder about the night.The night where silence
plants seeds deep into the soil,
where raw buds feign sleep
waiting for the light of dawn.Margaret Simon, all rights reserved
Reflections on the Teche 