Everything Makes Music When It Burns
R.G. Evans
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2014 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Margaret Reid, Traditional Verse
Everything makes music when it burns—
destruction is the rougher side of art
where char and embers harmonize in turns.
Until you live your life within these terms
your sadness may conceal the beauty part:
that everything makes music when it burns.
The aria within our body churns
with smoke and blackened ruins of our hearts
where char and embers harmonize in turns.
We're fuel, and when we carbonize it forms
études and scales, and passion's complex charts.
Everything makes music when it burns.
A skilled musician finds he can discern
a symphony where conflagrations start,
where char and embers harmonize in turns,
and even when it's all collapsed and worms
make homes inside the burned out vital parts,
still everything makes music when it burns.
The char and embers harmonize in turns.
