Music for the Living

In Vietnam it is said
music is for the dead.

1.
From grief came a vow
to keep her voice low,
attuned to memory
of duets in G.

So unmelodic years
stretched, like a wound
steel string, silent and
unfretted over ebony.

2.
Once prone in shadows
of loss, rosewood and spruce
are again vibrant in deft hands;
a perfect tone is releaseed

from sorrow's restraint,
and rises up to console
the living mother
of another lost son.

(c)Allen M. Weber                  2009

published in Skipping Stones, Vol VI

Mindworm Press, Chesapeake, VA