High Noon

It is perhaps the flight

Of pain

From the shiny dark

Of a dreary thought

… An island without a beach

Where wandering boats

Have let their anchors

Rust in silence

The Lone Cypress

Has the shape of the ocean

Winds

And the whisper of distant names

It is perhaps

The high noon dreary

They chase away

Under their wings

The raven

PS/ I took this photo in Prescott, Arizona where the raven is a protected species and part of the Native American mythology. I have written about it here: https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-raven-in-native-american-cultures.html

June 27, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Mandolino Plucked with the Plectrum of Remembrance

The strings of my mandolino have the farewell of memory

Borrowed from the imagination of hands

That once wondered on a distant balcony

How the city below remembers full moons

I was given that mandolino

To hear myself grow with time

I did not know that the melody of my grandfather’s tears

Would stay silent in the space

Where I became what I once was

Unknowing and grateful

And I accepted that

While the dead are done with the losses they kept secret

I had to learn how to mourn my own losses

Alone

On the strings of a mandolino

When my hands were ready again

To play

PS/ This 75-years old mandolino was given to me by my grandfather, a professional musician, almost 60 years ago. I kept it silent since. Today, I heard it play a melody borrowed from my own imagination.

June 18, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020