Hymnal

That was the year
music moved in
and never left.

Our lowly days
floated past us
like happy wreckage
in a vast sea of songs—

melodies breezing through
dried goldenrod stalks,
scampering up the lattice,
idling in the cool emerald moss,
landing momentarily
on a pile of flagstone,
floating on some sublime
peach cloud at sunset,
issuing ghostly hymns
of moon and stars—

a running soundtrack
for the ordinary, transcendent
and absurd.

Amidst these divine
harmonics we sat,
and the trees chuckled
at our tender confessions
to the yard squirrel,
but we did not care.

The squirrel was made
by the word, the word that
gave us this gift of music,
the music of the ages,
of the spheres, of sunsets,
of the stones and moss and grasses,
of the squirrels and laughing trees,
each an echo of the eternal love song
that sustains all.

Claire Juno, © 2020

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