Fusion

The story: This poem was born out of thoughts and conversation from atop the Space Needle on a beautiful Seattle evening.

I was hoping this would be a song, but for now the thoughts are a poem.

The idea for this started when I stepped out on the observation deck of the Space Needle and was greeted by a trio of musicians, playing violin and guitar, with no one around to listen but me. Their audience was the merely the city below.

Other conversations inspired this poem, but the image of those musicians silhouetted against the night sky, instruments in hand, with no one to hear them but the city below was just a beautiful picture to me.

We sat atop the world.

Glittering like a jewel in the evening
Full of possibilities of pain and pleasure
The stars found themselves mirrored
In the glimmer below

Or was it the other way around?

I heard violins and guitars
Strummed and plucked
For pleasure none but their own
And their gypsy tunes drift
Carefree and lustily
Like a fine, sweet smoke.

Despite their warmth, I shivered
And retreated inside behind glass doors
Where the view is less brilliant
But far more manageable.

A lone, fragile thread
Starting to unravel
As words unconsciously
Eased through the cracks
Of a contemplative heart
Belying the calm, pleasant facade.

A lovely contradiction, to be sure
In which notes resonated
with only the slightest discord

I heard your counterpoint
Rising and falling
In a broken double helix
Straining toward tension
Longing for release
Meeting in brief, rare moments of
Synchronicity

Yet the harmony and beauty
Become enmeshed in the discord
In the disconnect
In the contradiction.

This rebellious fugue haunts me
And while it reverberates indoors
Upon these glass walls
There is no chance of dissipation

For I hear it gently ricochet
Against my spirit
Again and again

And I hear its source
And I become it
While it becomes me

And through the glass window
I hear strains of that gypsy melody
Play on and on outside
To serenade the shining city below
With its unfettered bohemian spirit

And I think to myself

Maybe I should invent a new genre.