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“Harvest Moon,” photo by C. E. Price / Public domain

 

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Amazing Grace Played by Hubert Laws

The flute floats a legato stream of notes,
blood from the heart pouring in a lucent stream,
brilliant as a harvest moon filling the sky
with radiance such as the flutist releases
into the concert hall, notes carried on breath
prayerful and ecstatic, marrying a history
of wished for freedom and salvation
to the musician’s passionate merger

with his time where freedom is partial,
still in question, where he celebrates
beauty’s delicacy, while mourning life’s
imperfections that have lasted for oh so
many generations; the flute sails above
all that is imperfect, tracing musical lines
that are ineffably sublime, and all who listen
are carried through time, from slave ships

to the concert hall where Mr. Laws defines
beauty, loss, hope, and what might be, what
does not yet exist, but must exist; the flute’s
breath sails across concert hall and out into
night sky, steadily lifting toward harvest moon,
an elegant metaphor for beauty, for what could
be, what must be;.as flute embraces silence,
listeners are enwrapped in poignant reverie.

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by Michael L. Newell
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Laws on Flute / Pavane

hover with the hummingbird
between rock & cloud

feel the wing beats

the cacti blossoming
into silence

listen

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by CJ Muchhala

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Michael L. Newell lives on the Florida coast.

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CJ Muchhala has absolutely no musical ability but a great deal of appreciation for and love of jazz and blues. She does, however, try to make music with words which have found their way into a number of journals, anthologies, and art/poetry exhibits.

 

 

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Listen to Hubert Laws play “Amazing Grace” from the 1973 CTI album Morning Star

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Listen to Hubert Laws play “Pavane,” from the 1971 CTI album The Rite of Spring

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