I’ve posted previously on the way that music can inspire me to write, and this time, for a change, it’s poetry. I’ve been thinking about the lead character in a novel I’m writing, and in my quest to create his backstory, I have turned to music as one of the most powerful means of triggering emotional responses to explore my deepest feelings about the personality I want to create.
The track that has triggered this piece is Lost Map/The Hawk, from the original motion picture soundtrack of How I Live Now, by Jon Hopkins. (Spotify link) (iTunes link). I’ve never seen the movie, but this is what the music found in me.
She Waits
I can see her, but I cannot touch:
There, in shimmering sunlight,
With dandelion seed dancers,
She floats on air, a golden framed cascade
Of gossamer strands,
Bright-crowned and kissed by sunbeams,
Softly stroked by waving wheat and
Motes of harvest dust,
Twinkling.
She smiles and
Sees me.
I am all air, but cannot breathe,
This moment all eternity,
But without time:
The scene seared in my lidless eyes,
As I wait to either wake
Or die, when
We, with loose linked lissom arms again,
Will waltz amongst the tangled grain,
And search inside each other’s eyes
For what lies out of reach.
Untouched, she waits, and
Always will, as I in time abide,
Each heartbeat bringing closer
That tenderest of tunes.
My flesh may waste, but
I am full
Of what we were
And what we will become.
© Henry Hyde 2016
Photo credit: Sam J Daniels via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA