Today’s writing prompt is a poem. You can write on the theme or mood of the poem, a stanza, a line, or a word to inspire your writing. Just Write!
Yo-Yo Ma by Donna Emerson
He played twenty years ago at Tanglewood. We sat in the first row,
still as the moment after rain. Air full of ozone under an enormous
white tent for his perfect baroque bowing, for his move into the
music, his calm, restrained stroke.
People stood in the aisles. Yo-Yo’s strong bow arm reached front,
his body tilted back. His face, shoulders, then body transformed
into his cello and song.
His excited strumming. Plucking like a mad man. His confident
leaning, his fond embrace of his old cello. We stopped breathing in
the piano parts, our breaths pure when they burst out during the
double fortissimo.
Fully felt notes. Deep bells on tops of quiet mountains. He took us
with him. Swaying as one. At the break we couldn’t stop
exclaiming, filled with perfect sounds.
He thanked everyone who played with him. He walked up to them
during the standing ovation for him and said so.
Five year later he came to Santa Rosa. He let my son play his
Montagnana cello. Yo-Yo said he wanted to play bass as a child,
but his father told him their house was too small.
Listening while the children stroked, he thanked the air.
He thanked the children, clapped for their trying.
He thanked our ears and the music showering over them.
—Previously published in The Place of Our Meeting, Finishing Line Press.
