I turned a deaf ear to the music of the spheres,
shutting out ratio song and measured integers—
blind to starlight pinpointing big-picture stories.
This winter’s beat went arrhythmic, and I lost count
to rain pattering crystals on the windowpanes,
to wordless chatter clicking my teeth,
to the tufted titmouse’s peter-peter-peter pecking my brain.
This high-strung pizzicato nightmared my daydreams,
and my fingers plucked at quilts and twisted sheets
as the blue moon squeezed through the shutter slats,
too close for comfort until coppering reddish.
I opened to the gaze of the moon’s shadow man,
and my blood tuned to a cello’s sonorous warmth,
mellowing to that ancient call—the tears of things.
Note: The phrase “tears of things” derives from the Latin phrase “Lacrimae rerum” from Book I, line 462 of The Aeneid by Virgil.
Catherine Hamrick is a copywriter in the greater Atlanta area. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Blue Mountain Review, storySouth, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel: Appalachian Witness, The Ekphrastic Review, Sparks of Calliope, Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine, Willows Wept Review, and elsewhere. Find her online at https://randomstoryteller.com.