Rainy Day

     


                                                            Rainy Day


    Why do the high notes excite and the low notes give a feeling of comfort and rest?  She listened to Antonio Vivaldi's  "The Four Seasons"  and fluttered around the room in the company of the violins and flutes.  Suddenly, the deep penetration of the bass carried her away onto the sofa where she spent the next several seconds just thinking.....where was he?  What was he doing?           

  Softly interrupted by a soothing legato violin, she remembered the tea on the stove.  Reaching for a cup, the door bell rang.  It was a tall stranger with a package.  The Cellos and bass section delivered a steady rhythm, low and pulsating, driving the air out of the doorway and into the street.  She signed, took the package, and gently placed it on the dinning room table.  A table so stately, with it's carved legs and softly worn edges, one could easily imagine Vivaldi writing at this moment, at this table.

    Having studied ballet, she was exquisite in her movement.  The accident was no longer visible in her gait as she poetically made her way back, tea waiting.  Cup in hand, she turned her gaze out the shuttered window.  Violins scraped staccato passages as it lightly rained.  A rabbit dashed across the yard and hid in the garden.  The wind blew. The trees bent. The rain bounced off the glass.  The doorbell rang. 

  "I forgot to give you this." said the tall stranger.
  "Oh," she said as she signed. " Thank You."

    An oboe passage disappeared into the soft edges of the room, and she placed the small package neatly upon the other.  An oboe is so subtle, she thought.  If a room does indeed absorb sounds, this room is saturated with oily phrases and edgy notes.  Music vibrates the air, and anything living benefits.  And, anything not living is softened.  So, the music plays. 

    Nearly impossible for her to move without embracing the music, now Joe Henry, she glides back to her tea.  The rain is now steady but light and the rhythm unrelenting.  She knows her gift.  At times, it has been a burden. Only she can fully comprehend the magnitude and has only lately embraced the idea.  Outside, the sun knifes through a cloud and slices the garden in half.  A robin ends the life of a worm.  The rain falls.  She glides in her legging's across the room...she glides to the sounds of Joe Henry. 

    Syncopated phrasing of conga drums now pave the way.  So she moves,  alternating each elbow in the opposite hand, a dance she made up while in the garden on bright shinny morning.  A slight spin, a half step, and into the nook.  The tea was still warm. She sipped a little to a piano trill and sat silently.  Where is he now?  The last time she saw him he was performing at the Zoo in Boston.  The Zoo is what she called it. It was not because of it's patrons, but because of it's ambiance.  She could hear things, things others couldn't hear.  And the ambiance at The Zoo was so revealing of it's  past.  What she heard that night she will never forget.  The rain pranced now.  It ran across the window in herds of droplets all in a hurry to get to their destination.  The wind blew harder.  A small branch snapped. She hated seeing that.

                       
 

   

    to be continued.........