(for Roswitha)

Her arm falls       an arc of promise
The music begins to speak     each bow
of the cello          is line more
eloquent         than any I
might dissemble         yet
I am trapped in playing
with the words she spoke
        lines - thick slabs of I
        one moving across
        another scraping by
        opened screams break
        the loneliness of
        life pressed into life
The rosin fails to soften

She promised us a death
a pattern of notes to de-
note the ending of strife
the ending of failure to ever know another
the birth of a third
a phoenix soaring on the plumes
of smoke tortured by their paths through
chimneys stacked
with ash that never made the air

My ear lacks the skill to hear the notes
which yield
where the lines abandon the solid plane
become fluid giving up themselves
to reveal the birth of one - a new other

The one who wrote this to play on
another's ear has moved on to wisdom beyond
children's talks centred round three leaf clovers
Still       I have heard the Father in creation
the Son in the anguish of one determined
to pay the price of meeting
And in the complete living of the Father and the Son
the living of one for the other
I missed the death
because it was not death
just the space between bowings
a line in its own right
free to find a way to          bend and circle
                                        divide and unify

The final rising of the bow into silence
Here is the indwelling of all loves
where the voices sing as one

Published in Arc of Promise (Australia).