A Broken Song

                 "But it was more than that,
                   More even than her voice..."
                                             -Wallace Stevens

Miraculous, her song this evening
and even more that she can, standing, sing
in spite of shattered bones: just two, in one
small toe, but pain goes ringing through her leg
along her spine, confusing messages
yet who could know, when listening brings peace?

I could not do it: I need quietude
to hear the subtle whisperings that rouse
a few sounds deep within me, questioning
all I had known before: that all we see
around us summons everything that is
and we, mere whirling mirrors in the sun

shine indirectly light into this shade.
Yet, through the charismatics of her song
while all that seemed remains, yet something else
inbreathed with subtle harmonies becomes,
and I can feel what I cannot see
around us, swirling like midsummer leaves

in long cascades of wind, as waterfalls
throw off prismatic shimmerings, distinct
but insubstantial when we reach our hands
out to the cliffside emptiness while wings
find graceful sustenance, insouciant
across that space where voices linger still.