Shallow Dreaming

Arrangement for One Voice

That restless night his name eluded me.I summoned what I knew of him to mind—His cultivated Jewish family;The honors that he modestly declinedWhile boosting Schubert and Saint Matthew's Passion;The sunny symphony that won applause;His posthumously falling out of fashion;And, finally, the Third Reich's banning ofHis work, though nobody had served the causeOf German music with more sense and love.

Yet these particulars could not supplyThe warmth and focus of a proper noun;Nor was it, as I tossed in bed, clear whyMy memory let this kind romantic down.Did it reflect the schooling I'd been given?Had church and am radio inducedIn me a taste too Bach- and Beatles-driven?Were axons, shriveling with age, to blame?Sleep found and sent me, like a thwarted Proust,Through shallow dreaming, searching for a name.

Next morning, as I paid for roses atThe local flower market, it returned.I groaned, "How could I have forgotten that?"The florist glanced up, curious and concerned.Since others were in line, I couldn't speakOf the brain's quirks and crotchets or the wayA prodigy matured till his techniqueAnd the profounder claims of art were one.But when she wrapped and passed me my bouquet,I said it was for Felix Mendelssohn.

Pastoral at Rock Point

Approached by boat, the cliff did not look high,But, when we boys gazed downward from its summit,We felt uncomfortably near the sky.We would leap out in turn and, feet first, plummet—Legs working frantically in search of brakes.Or, not to be the last left on the heights,We'd jump in twos and threes and burst the lake'sDark surface like a shower of meteorites.

Elsewhere bravado led us to remorse.There, though, we learned of force and counterforce,Descending through the many-moted, cold,Green, sun-shot water with our lifted hairTill depth slowed us, and buoyancy took holdAnd helped us rise back to the light and air.