When the love is too large
and it spills messily on the floor
and you are two years old,
strapped to a high chair,
you cry,
watching it lonely splat
all over the floor.
You toss your plate of overcooked spaghetti
to join it
then stop your tears,
your breath,
and peer downward.
The pause is needed.
The wails might overwhelm the masterpiece:
love and spaghetti.
When this happens the dog comes scampering over,
hastily lapping up both, heartily,
bringing brightness ~
until you are scolded,
but you know your love is safe in the dog’s belly.

When the love is too large
and your offerings form into words
that don’t stick
and aren’t caught,
words that float past unanswered,
not sad,
words that settle on a bluebird’s wing,
then fly
on the proverbial
wing and a prayer.
You hear them,
safe in flight,
as birdsong.

When the love is too large
and boys grow tall and somewhat frightening
because you can no longer run faster than they can
and they look at you differently,
(scared themselves,
of themselves?)
maybe it is too soon.
Love alights on round-backed ponies
in fields and novels and shiny magazine photos.
Black birds on sun-dappled hide.

When the the love is too large
even as years pass,
it lands heavily with a thud.
No innocent dream can carry it forever,
try as it may.
This is when the heart grows tentative,
taken over by a frantic quest for answers.
Careers, degrees, marriages, divorces,
children, hangovers, mistaken recognitions,
fears of love lost or love never found.
Exhaustion.
Resignation.

Love is there,
grazing,
prancing.
Just the right size.
They come to us
in this place and time
because we have earned our way.
Both of us.
Instinctually, unavoidably,
we are pulled
because the fit is inevitable
and perfect.
Our love is great enough
to carry them.

When the curtain falls
the oboe players exhale,
the soprano takes her bow
on stage,
and even the bass players
feel a sense of renewed time.

When the curtain falls
on the opera
the piccolo returns to its case,
lofty punctuation
quieted. The small, the mighty, vanquished.

When the Grand Opera concludes
the vacuum left behind
refills with the mundane.
Reality intrudes.
We see our fellows,
our smiles perplexed
and smudged with the debris
of conclusion.
Air ringing,
echoes of chords
once clearly enunciated,
pathos, logos, ethos,
vaporized.

Grand Operas conclude and
transcendence, that soul caressing
gift, remains ephemeral.
The overture,
anticipatory by
design,
experienced long ago, now synoptic dust.
Forward chords, moved
by tension and
relaxation, retreat to hidden space.
Left to our own devices
we crawl in suit jackets and pearls,
hard, dark,
separated.

The music lives in memory
where beauty’s smooth flank nudges us,
note by note,
unexpectedly.
Staff paper
receives inspiration,
as wriggling nascent epochs.
We are scattered
spots inked by Lucia’s blood.
She sang. Our ears cupped grace.
We are entwined.
Our tears and laughter rush the stage.
We are the Grand Opera.