The Only Symphony
Who isn’t drifting inside and out
at the same time? Whose heart doesn’t float
like a paper-thin note on the wind?
I have been watching the leaves
do their leaving, watching the wind
scoop over and under them, twisting
this way and that and back again
until they turn into the ground.
And I have been turning myself.
Do you know what I mean?
Have you ever considered your life’s like an elevator,
always departing as well as arriving, each floor
another ceiling, every ceiling, a floor?
But I drift, don’t I?
I was talking about the leaves,
the way they swirl as they fall.
I was dipping and rising,
rocking to the left, to the right,
the way some leaves cradle the air,
like gentle pendulums, bobbing
back and forth like Muslims bowing,
rabbis davening, like children riding
the most graceful swings in the world,
like brooms sweeping away what’s right
and what’s left in one motion,
like the ebb and flow of the ocean,
or the hands of the maestro inside us
conducting the only symphony we know.
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