Description
How do we get through this? How do we deal with grief, loss, and sadness? These four movements with poetry by Julia Klatt Singer tackle this issue with beauty and clarity.
Text
I. Let the Leaves Fall
Sometimes we have to let them go,
let the leaves fall.
Under bare limbs
we stand surrounded
by the beauty of everything
we’ve lost.
II. Wrap Your Body in Darkness
Put on an old hat and mittens.
Wrap your body in darkness. Carry
the weight of night on your shoulders.
Bare yourself
like these winter trees.
Let beauty fall to your feet, let wind
shake you, let your bones swallow
the chill of this evening’s air.
Nothing, not even winter,
can tame
your wild bird of a heart.
III. Bury Me in White
The silence of snow,
like the silence of you
is what I wake to
blinding white
and falling.
Start the day
By throwing away
words;
scarlet, indigo, then
cerulean, mango
who needs them
in this kind of cold?
Bury me in white,
bury me away
like your heart.
IV. Swallow the Sun
A Secret. No frost today
on my window, no tumbling stars
no forests of white, no birds
on the branch outside
no chance of one landing now
stealing the morning with their song
as I think about your hands
and how they make me feel
as beautiful as frost
as transparent as glass
as if I’ve swallowed
the sun.
– Julia Klatt Singer