Rapture, or When It Happens
- April 14, 1935, Black Sunday
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Virgil waits for the black blizzard to pass.
No one tells him what to see or how long to wait.
There’s just Virgil and the fiddle
and the elbow where two roads meet
along an empty horizon purpled out
into darkness.
First it’s a vague distance, a collection,
the earth roiling out of itself.
Then the devil is in the dust
carrying what we’ve cast off—seeds, bits of skin,
what would have been wheat
in the land’s broken promise
lifting like a cloud.
There you lie in the beech-tree shade,
Brooding over your music from the Muse,
While we must leave our native place, our homes,
The fields we love, and go elsewhere.
And just then the sky grows into miles and miles of swallowing,
the impossible dark,
weather alive as any animal too stubborn to die
and Virgil does what he knows.
He can’t see his knuckles or his knees,
but feels the lightning from bow to fiddle,
a spark between strings.
A light in his fingers of something happening.
The world blows and blows while Virgil grows electrified,
a small tune in a black sea of noise.
Then the calm, an opening
for the moon to rise and send its shine
along the fiddle’s curves.
The night’s been hollowed out into silence,
a quiet deep enough for Virgil to feel
what’s left of the earth
humming underneath his feet.
And he plays a lonely melody there,
just for a while, until sound finds its way in
with the shadows. His fingers arched
in moonlight. His face, tied to the music
by his chin, its own kind of moon.
No one tells him what to see or how long to wait.
There’s just Virgil and the fiddle
and the elbow where two roads meet
along an empty horizon purpled out
into darkness.
First it’s a vague distance, a collection,
the earth roiling out of itself.
Then the devil is in the dust
carrying what we’ve cast off—seeds, bits of skin,
what would have been wheat
in the land’s broken promise
lifting like a cloud.
There you lie in the beech-tree shade,
Brooding over your music from the Muse,
While we must leave our native place, our homes,
The fields we love, and go elsewhere.
And just then the sky grows into miles and miles of swallowing,
the impossible dark,
weather alive as any animal too stubborn to die
and Virgil does what he knows.
He can’t see his knuckles or his knees,
but feels the lightning from bow to fiddle,
a spark between strings.
A light in his fingers of something happening.
The world blows and blows while Virgil grows electrified,
a small tune in a black sea of noise.
Then the calm, an opening
for the moon to rise and send its shine
along the fiddle’s curves.
The night’s been hollowed out into silence,
a quiet deep enough for Virgil to feel
what’s left of the earth
humming underneath his feet.
And he plays a lonely melody there,
just for a while, until sound finds its way in
with the shadows. His fingers arched
in moonlight. His face, tied to the music
by his chin, its own kind of moon.
The Story of Him
When he was born, he could already play.
Music, like time and space, was in his blood.
He only had to wait for his body to catch up
to what was flowing inside.
It happened like this.
One day he was a boy in town with an afternoon to kill.
He found his way to the library
all lit and dusty inside.
The shelves grew up and out like forests
and each book was a bird in a tree
ready to sing. He moved through them like wind
reading whatever he could reach,
gathering thick piles on either side
and climbing to reach more.
His mind was ready soil
and each idea was a seed.
Every character and story, too.
The garden grew full
and soon everyone was talking.
Paul Bunyan, Odysseus, Rumi,
Johnny Appleseed, Sappho, Lincoln,
Li Po, Paganini, Emily Dickinson,
Harriet Tubman, Crazy Horse,
Robert Johnson, Don Quixote.
All words and names and places.
All deeds and trials.
All showing him a way.
All fueling to a single hum
like a melody in his brain
like a thread connecting
with notes to stitch it all together.
He went back day after day
for weeks maybe, years maybe,
until he had read enough talking,
until one day he knew enough
to make his own knowledge.
His wouldn’t be numbers or words
or politics, literature, or religion.
His would be what comes out of a fiddle,
what feels simple but sounds like everything.
Same as the sun checking in on us each morning.
Same as a tree that finds its way to sky.
Every story he ever read went into his fiddle.
It was time to bring them forward.
It was time to tell everyone.
That’s where he is now. Out in the world.
Same as geese or deer.
Going where his tunes take him.
Where ears need something to hear.
He’s never too far from a campfire
or a bridge, or the next town.
Never far from a hot meal
or a new place to stay.
Never far from a good story,
and always ready to make one.
Music, like time and space, was in his blood.
He only had to wait for his body to catch up
to what was flowing inside.
It happened like this.
One day he was a boy in town with an afternoon to kill.
He found his way to the library
all lit and dusty inside.
The shelves grew up and out like forests
and each book was a bird in a tree
ready to sing. He moved through them like wind
reading whatever he could reach,
gathering thick piles on either side
and climbing to reach more.
His mind was ready soil
and each idea was a seed.
Every character and story, too.
The garden grew full
and soon everyone was talking.
Paul Bunyan, Odysseus, Rumi,
Johnny Appleseed, Sappho, Lincoln,
Li Po, Paganini, Emily Dickinson,
Harriet Tubman, Crazy Horse,
Robert Johnson, Don Quixote.
All words and names and places.
All deeds and trials.
All showing him a way.
All fueling to a single hum
like a melody in his brain
like a thread connecting
with notes to stitch it all together.
He went back day after day
for weeks maybe, years maybe,
until he had read enough talking,
until one day he knew enough
to make his own knowledge.
His wouldn’t be numbers or words
or politics, literature, or religion.
His would be what comes out of a fiddle,
what feels simple but sounds like everything.
Same as the sun checking in on us each morning.
Same as a tree that finds its way to sky.
Every story he ever read went into his fiddle.
It was time to bring them forward.
It was time to tell everyone.
That’s where he is now. Out in the world.
Same as geese or deer.
Going where his tunes take him.
Where ears need something to hear.
He’s never too far from a campfire
or a bridge, or the next town.
Never far from a hot meal
or a new place to stay.
Never far from a good story,
and always ready to make one.
Rebecca Macijeski is the author of Autobiography (Split Rock Press, 2022). She holds a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has attended artist residencies with The Ragdale Foundation, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Art Farm Nebraska. She has also worked for Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column, as an Assistant Editor in Poetry for the literary journals Prairie Schooner and Hunger Mountain, and is the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee, her poems have appeared in The Missouri Review, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Nimrod, The Journal, Sycamore Review, The Cincinnati Review, Puerto del Sol, and many others. Rebecca is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Creative Writing Programs at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
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