Dear Mister Music, throw me a line.
Cast me a life-laden strain of your voice,
a rich-coloured strand spun fast across time;
pull me back into feeling, don’t leave me a choice.
In your vibrations, you tear but won’t yield
as you swim straight through endless klatches and pools
of memory, gently eroding my shield
and unwinding the thoughts bound in terse, tangled spools.
Hold me one note, that we people can hear
sustained amid discord so we can derive
from it our own harmonies, grip them dear,
feel their swells lilting within us – survive.
Though chaos may clutch me just send me the sign
that your fearlessness promised me so long ago
like a bittersweet finger of sun on the shrine
that I built, then saw buried by layers of snow.
Be it a slow undertone or a sea
of shivering strings pressing on, always on
in a surging cascade of the frail and the free
as they dance, cry and sing, try to paint a new dawn.
Show me the vistas, the moments, their unity –
things that I wish I could see on my own.
Dear Mister Music, your soaring impunity
gives me a will that I couldn’t have sown.
Sweep me up into your fervour so sure
that I may one day call it “mine”, even “me”!
Give source to my spirit, let its edges blur
in the vibrance of what my conviction will be.
Your gentlest of hands on my weariest brows
cannot lull my disquiet back into peace
but no one’s a clean slate, you sigh, and somehow
your most righteous of chords will be the release
that will help me justify that as they grow!
Dear Mister Music, I’ll dive through the pain
’til my fears morph under your spell and I know
you can make them beautiful ghosts once again.
Lost in Sound, by Ann Sheng
______________________________________________________________________________
Cristina Leone is a first-year university student with an interest Neuroscience and Anthropology, a passion for equity, and a love for long-distance running. Cristina has enjoyed creative writing – both poetry and fiction – since she was very young, and is always looking for ways in which to challenge herself.
Ann Sheng is a self-taught traditional artist and university student living in Vancouver, Canada, Her favorite medium is watercolor, but she also enjoys exploring different techniques and styles. In her free time, she loves nature, reading and sports. To see more of her work, visit: annsquare.deviantart.com.
