Radio Alarm
Without warning a song flashes
in the dark, after night, before light.
The day wants to begin
but my dreams won’t let it in.
A song from somewhere not seen,
unhurried like silence
which is not its opposite,
more like its completion,
music and silence
both antonyms of noise.
From some sky opening up,
the music of cooling rain lands, lingers,
like a memory out of reach,
that the sea, upon waking, calls back
as it pulls the light from stars into itself.
I hear it now as sunlight flies
through the window. Music alive
like lightning, like belief, just before
it vanishes and turns to pain.
8 thoughts on "Radio Alarm"
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This is beautiful and appropriately wistful and meditative.
I love:
that the sea, upon waking, calls back
as it pulls the light from stars into itself.
The ending is true and surprising.
Thanks Linda. I’ve been suffering from some kind of morning blues lately. Like I wake up feeling good, full of belief or whatever, and then my worries just come on and slam me. I don’t know. Usually by afternoon or evening I feel better about life.
I think maybe it’s these foggy, hard-to-put-into words kind of feelings we need to write about. Reaching for them with words even though we’ll never quite find the words.
I’ve found with age (73 3/4) that pain more and more becomes an aspect of waking. Your poem is a poignant expression of that and of how music and life are founded in the silence between notes.
The first sentence of your third stanza reminds me of my (very) old and unbalanced riding mower, I have to go over the lawn a 2nd or 3rd time.
It looks nice, but what a waste of gas.
Effective us of rhyme, alliteration. Sound enhances experience
The last line is a heartbreaker.
Well, really the last 3 lines…
Much appreciated, Ellen.