Spoonful

I hear a violin tonight.

It's competing with the rain, but I hear it. The neighbour's dog
is asleep in his house on the porch, and I hear a violin.

I can tell by listening that the musician's eyes are closed, and
she is trusting it, letting the old wood talk.

Sometimes when I can't sleep I imagine a town that doesn't exist
just yet. In my mind I create the streets, the houses, walkways
that take us down to the square, the harbor.

I'm walking there with Disa. Should we put a park here?, I ask.
She's interested in a water fountain for the thirsty, building nooks
where those whose feet are tired can curl up and read a book.

If the insomnia is extra intense, I begin making lists of the people
we'll invite to live in this imaginary town. Oh, sure, it'll be a town at
first, maybe a small city in time. On Sundays, no one will work.
It will be a day of music and feasting, stories told by elders.

I'll invite Gandhi, Goethe, Gibran and Rumi to live there. If Jesus
feels like company, he could live there, next door to Buddha.

We'll have poetry nights with William Blake, Rilke, Pablo Neruda,
Dylan Thomas if he promises not to knock things over. Raymond
Carver, e.e. cummings, Marquez, Elizabeth Cotton, Fred Neil,
Flannery, Joni, Thelonious, Laxness, Kundera, Akhmatova...

I want Boo Radley to live in our town, with his own housekeeping
room at the Mazappa House. Did you know he's got a big crush
on Sylvia Plath?

I'd invite Mickey Newbury to live there. Leonard Cohen could
stay in town when he's not at the monastery. Buffy Saint-Marie
could live beside us; that way I'd get to see her smile every day.
John Fahey, Steve Young. I'd have Cowboy Johnson and Jonmark
Stone there, Marie Rhines, Gillian and David, and that gypsy girl
named Lou who knew the entire Hank Williams songbook and sang
in a way that made the whole night sky seem to cry behind her.

I'd like Emmylou to come and sing with me sometime. I'd like
Frank Harte to teach us all a thousand songs. Karine Polwart,
Magne Hellesjo, Martin Simpson, Phil Ochs, Egbert Meyers,
Sandy Denny, Townes, June Tabor, Texas Granny, Taj...

The list grows long, the town becoming a small city. In another
dream, I ponder what to name this place. A name ought to be
a kind of medicine, an elixir, something that fills you back up
when you're running low.

Imagine. A town full of people you love, people who inspire you,
people who give you the courage to stand up to your gift.

I swear I hear an old violin coming up from the harbor. Do you
hear it, too? It's windy and the eaves make noise, but I hear it.

It's not the violin that drips with honey, not the self-conscious one
they sneak in back of movie scenes to make you cry. No, it's an
elder one, deeper, more brittle. The oil has left the wood, and
there is a longing that stretches the notes between us.

I like to think in our lives there is a kind of lemon that our souls
bring their own honey to.

Let's call our town Spoonful.

DL