Heartsong

A sound was bending in the wind
The half-music of rustling leaves
The quarter-notes of staccato rain
Hard on pavements, soft on grass,
On bare earth, drumming.

Not birdsong, nor with it,
The small birds’ exuberant anger;
Their squabbling warfare,
Complex, bursting voices,
Their quiet, nest-gentle sleep;

Not people, scrambling in haste,
On loud, chaotic journeys,
Laying claim to this or that,
As if tomorrow, like today,
Was a destination they could choose.

The sound whispered, tuned itself
Inside some unspoken thought,
A secret message, half-sung, contained
In everything, an essence, a modulation,
On a silent carrier-wave.

It was a broadcast, hidden,
Like radio in the sky, conducted to the heart,
Electric in its way, like static,
A tingling in the blood. time translated,
A tender prickling in the veins.

There, in the street-litter at my feet
Truth was laid out in common time,
Its pulse, this beat, this rhythm,
A reminder of life’s love for itself
And each of us for one another.

And it rises, sighing, flies to rest
Between us, between all things.
Eyes’ transmission,
Lips’ punctuation and fingers’ touch
Wordlessly take its secret music,
And make the blood its instrument.

I heard it as a sound beyond sound:
A sound revealed, by sidelong listening,
As the heartsong of the world.

I hear it still in the dull hours
Between sleeping and dreaming
In the stillness when wind dies
Or rain stops falling.

It grows from background silence,
A faint glissando, shadow made audible,
Echoes in darkness,
Shy voices in conversation,
The brush of eyelids closing,
Skin resting gentle on skin.

It is waiting for all of us:
Sound underscored behind our dissonance;
Inhaled breath before words;
Melody unshaped, its notes unregistered;
Song before voices find it.

 © BH 2014

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A little something I made for my son's wedding. Ross and Emma got married just outside Edinburgh and I read this. It was a fantastic day and I hope I caught a little resonance of the earth beneath us swelling with pride.