Lavender Song*

    By Karen Kelsay

When Lily plays the cello, it is holy.

Like lavender that strays from garden walls

and necklaces of evergreens that slowly

curl across the meadows, along the halls

her wreath of somber notes is softly borne.

She wings the bow; I hear my mother’s voice,

recall a lover’s crying flame. I mourn

and then, with silent chanting tongue, rejoice.

Each memory is coaxed aloud across

a grassy bottomland of time, the marrow

and the porous pith revealed. The loss,

half-opened flowers, flutters of a sparrow.

She plays the cello, slowly—and the night

becomes an aperture of grace. All lowly

thoughts swirl into quiet, purple light.

When Lily plays the cello, it is holy.

© 2011 Karen Kelsay

* Previously published in Dove on a Church Bench, Punkin House Press, 2011

Karen Kelsay has been published in a variety of magazines including: The Flea, The HyperTexts, The Boston Literary Magazine, The Foundling Review Magazine, Pirene's Fountain, and 14 by 14.  She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the editor of Victorian Violet Press.