Tchaikovsky, Korsakov and my beloved Rachmaninov
drown out first of Ivan’s drenching rains – not so terrible.
How is it that Russian triumvirate
composed score that centuries later, threaded together
this day, affords me measure of peace, such solace sublime?

Emptied of thought, feeling, I absorb music’s tender embrace.
Crescendos and decrescendos wash over me. Splash of cold
jolts me and I float up from dark abyss,
forgotten memories beached alongside surrendered self:
smooth seashells and seaweed remains scattered, stretched for sandy miles.

Without any will to save myself, I hear yet distant strains
of forgotten rhapsody and rise, moving light-footed
toward open window and grey skies beyond,
ready now to face reality of storm’s lethal surge,
spewing force of the Malevolent incensed I am still here.

Overtaken, I cannot contain such tragedy nor look
away from scene oddly beautiful because it rouses me
from despondency and brings near sweet death
I have always welcomed. Wind gusts converge, extending
cryptic consolation, decipherable only by soul…

lost inside. Comprehension eludes me now, but God speaks still
and the Russians remain with me in spite of misery,
persistent, pervasive melancholy.
Tears spill, form a river rushing to some imagined sea,
fall to random rhythm of notes in minor key, forgotten

as I have been, swallowed, silenced, swept away. Later, I hold
bouquet of paper roses and remember they are all
I have of you, save eternal love you
planted in my heart. Soft piano melody trickles
into saturated ground of me, waterlogged memory.