Chord Box: Poems

Nodes

Nodes David Rubio (1934–2000),British maker of stringed instruments In 1787,Ernst Chladni discovered consistent visual patterns by strewing sand on vibrating plates and watching it collect along nodal lines. —Springer Handbook of Acoustics At a café in Seville, troubadours read his grounds: go home;use tools;your red beard will grow long. For thirty years, he bentTilia to irons, met the edges with hide glue. Nest, his wife, in her nook whirred looms: rugs were color— or warmth—for corners not consumed in wood curl. He chiseled to her sounds. He moved as she moved. 64 To test a soundboard’s resonance, he’d open the tin of tea—and scatter leaves like ash, revving the synth to the desired pitch. On G3 , leaves stirred—slowly, as if post-mortem—and with the precision of woodwork, they drew a navel, encircled:  In a cup, or natal chart it should be read as a sun. Light, will, love a life’s work—and in time one’s own undoing.A tumor he could touch, roundness in his neck. There was a glyph in the mug the day he died. It was i, the way leaves trace G2 —two fish back to back, cambered but looped together. She felt this without knowing: the minute he sunk to his table. October, 65 trees lowering their flame and blond. She rose from her loom, found his face in sawdust—an inch from the last instrument, left without its varnish. Here, her arc begins. She is still, but grief bends towards her.The scissors clasped in one hand, red thread wound in her other. 66 ...