Maxine Chernoff
While signs proclaim the madness of the king,
the world spells its name in summary
summer of woes
and nature’s worldly
face: how fledglings enter seasons rich
with song, first notes the ear has
never heard or failed to hear: We found you,
world, when we were new, and you were
snow on roof, black branch of unfilled space,
absence to which we lent a listening ear.
Days painted green within a globe
that also holds the song. Only amber
colors world’s past display of how we
lived before the map was red with death:
eyes peer out from story’s unknown end.
Maxine Chernoff is the author of 17 poetry collections, most recently “Under the Music: Collected Prose Poems.” Former chair of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, she is an NEA Fellow, a winner of the PEN Translation Award, and a former visiting writer at the American Academy in Rome.
Eileen Aroon ::: The McPeake Family
Mbira ::: Ramiro Musotto
Evening Song (from Satyagraha) ::: Philip Glass
Hearing Solar Winds : Ascending & Descending ::: The Harmonic Choir
Paysages et Marines pour piano ::: Charles Koechlin (Michael Korstick-piano)