What Blossoms
When you breathed, it was as if you had kissed flame
You paced, the tube dragging along the floor
Attached to your nose, a cannula, “little reed”
That took its breaths for you, its music
Not the spring song you had once hummed
Nor the mon coeur of Saint-Saëns you sang
When voice and heart awoke at Juilliard
In a budding spring that never brought flower
A months old Opera News lies half-read, its mouth
Open, on your nightstand, as if everything
Might break into song, the old Callas records
Rise up and play themselves on the old LP,
Scratchy but otherworldly all the same
Even now you try to sing
Be no sleeper in the dust, eschew any silent
Abodes, blow down the muted gates of sheol!
If they have no Porgy and Bess, protest
And think of us . . .
You died today. I drive home while the radio plays
Mahler’s Blumine, his discarded blossoms
So beautiful they bring rain,
This late bouquet . . .
-- Dylan Willoughby
The poem appeared in Agenda.