Report #57

This week's Report from recorded on my birthday, in fact it was my The-Answer-to-the-Question-of-the-meaning-of-Life, the Universe and Everything-th Birthday.  So the featured poem was written that day, titled "Birthday Poem, 2010."  Kind of a birthday present to myself. Here it is:

    Birthday Poem, 2010

Morning
and every window in the house
sings about the wind
as fragments of strange dreams
scatter for the shadowed corners of the room

Later, Beethoven’s Third
pounds ripples in my bathwater
contending with the wind
losing, thank gods, in the end

If the heights of human-made beauty
ever could best the earth’s power
then the depths of human weakness could too,
and the wind and all its music would cease

But now the Eroica has ended,
leaving a more beautiful silence
which is, of course, the composer’s greatest work
so I dress and step outside
to feel the air of another year
on my face and in my lungs

Juncos and magpies remind me
that we are all creatures of flight,
passing from earth to sky and back again
with every heartbeat and blast of wind and
turn of the seasons which move

with the perfect pitch and tempo
of the symphony of silence
which sustains us all

            –Marc Beaudin, 14 April 2010

Music for this week was "Black Nile" from Malachi Thompson's Freebop Now! (I may mistakenly call it "Black Night" on this recording -- ignore that).  Personnel include Thompson on trumpet, Billy Harper on tenor sax, Steve Berry on trombone, Kirk Brown on piano, James Cammack on bass and Dana Hall on drums.

Click below to listen to the episode:
Report #57