The Music In His Soul

The music gently called him in his cradle
While he was just a child
Before he could even talk

He hungered and reached to play along
They made him wait.
Made him wait until he was six years old
then he took to it like bees make honey.

The longer he studied
the less he understood
how to sing the song
in his soul

Eventually he left those lessons
and started searching on his own
Some see that he is searching still

What is the music in his soul?
What is that song that weaves
his parts into a whole
He is searching, always searching
to play the music in his soul.


He'd listen to Gospel choruses
study folk performers
he'd pick the Lester Flatt Bluegrass G run
explore jazz chords and Celtic rhythms

He'd seek out traditional players
and try to learn their songs
delighted whenever he could play along.

Then one old fiddler
put down his bow and asked,

"Sonny, you're always asking me for the tunes
I like to play, and
I am glad to share them with you
But a thought occurs to me
don't know if you knew,
but I wonder,
don't your people
have some music, too?"


What is the music in his soul?
What is that song that weaves
his parts into a whole
He is searching, always searching
to play the music in his soul.

Journal entry 7/30/08  SBE

On Music

by Ann Porter

This poem was shared with me by a friend who has studied music with me for several years and I want to share it with you.
(You can hear it read aloud by Garrison Keillor on the Writer's Alamanac here.)

When I was a child I once sat sobbing on the floor Beside my mother’s piano As she played and sang For there was in her singing A shy yet solemn glory My smallness could not hold And when I was asked Why I was crying I had no words for it I only shook my head And went on crying Why is it that music At its most beautiful Opens a wound in us An ache a desolation Deep as a homesickness For some far-off And half-forgotten country I’ve never understood Why this is so But there’s an ancient legend From the other side of the world That gives away the secret Of this mysterious sorrow For centuries on centuries We have been wandering But we were made for Paradise As deer for the forest And when music comes to us With its heavenly beauty It brings us desolation For when we hear it We half remember That lost native country We dimly remember the fields Their fragrant windswept clover The birdsongs in the orchards The wild white violets in the moss By the transparent streams And shining at the heart of it Is the longed-for beauty Of the One who waits for us Who will always wait for us In those radiant meadows Yet also came to live with us And wanders where we wander.