Guest Post: I Always Wonder and Finale

Thank you Victoria Doerper for allowing me to share your two delightful Day 30 poems.

I Always Wonder

I always wonder
What leaves feel
When they unfurl,
Or when they twirl
Free of a branch.

I wonder about eggs
That rest in soft nests,
When protective shells
Are finally hacked and
Cracked by tiny urgent beaks.

I wonder about flocks
Leaving a home location
And winging in migration
With soaring V-formation
To somewhere way beyond.

I wonder how the first,
Or final, breath feels.
Does the soul steel
Against a dark unknown
Or open like a flower?

Finale

Our instruments tune to the score
We have unremittingly written
With what the days have given
Us to work with. We may write
Our songs unwittingly,
Or with great care,
But who knows how
Those deceptively simple
Black notations of vibration
Sound when they are played,
Unless you are a prodigy
Making music in your head,
Which most of us are not.
We are as surprised as you are
When the tune comes out
In raging indignation or love.

We improvise by inclination
And by force. When swollen fingers
Fail in their ability to fully press
True notes out,
Do we quiet down, or do we quicken
Into something completely new?
Waves pound through
In music-making percussion,
Rambling and ranging beats
That bang up and down our spine
Ring into our ears,
Thump and swish
Our thickening blood
In tireless ebbs and flows
Through our own internal tributaries.

Our meandering rivers
And rag-tag compositions
Play together
An idiosyncratic symphony
And if we are true,
If we are lucky,
And if we are oh-so-blessed,
We leave in satisfying finale,
One grand and crashing crescendo.

–V. Doerper, 04.30.14

Photo: Wikimedia Commons