{"id":7785,"date":"2018-10-05T01:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T08:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=7785"},"modified":"2018-10-09T14:53:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T21:53:24","slug":"yo-yo-ma-prompt-389","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/yo-yo-ma-prompt-389\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a0Yo-Yo Ma . . . Prompt #389"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;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!<\/p>\n<p>Yo-Yo Ma by Donna Emerson<\/p>\n<p>He played twenty years ago at Tanglewood. We sat in the first row,<\/p>\n<p>still as the moment after rain. Air full of ozone under an enormous<\/p>\n<p>white tent for his perfect baroque bowing, for his move into the<\/p>\n<p>music, his calm, restrained stroke.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>People stood in the aisles. Yo-Yo\u2019s strong bow arm reached front,<\/p>\n<p>his body tilted back. His face, shoulders, then body transformed<\/p>\n<p>into his cello and song.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>His excited strumming. Plucking like a mad man. His confident<\/p>\n<p>leaning, his fond embrace of his old cello. We stopped breathing in<\/p>\n<p>the <em>piano<\/em> parts, our breaths pure when they burst out during the<\/p>\n<p>double <em>fortissimo<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Fully felt notes. Deep bells on tops of quiet mountains. He took us<\/p>\n<p>with him. Swaying as one. At the break we couldn\u2019t stop<\/p>\n<p>exclaiming, filled with perfect sounds.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>He thanked everyone who played with him. He walked up to them<\/p>\n<p>during the standing ovation for him and said so.<\/p>\n<p>Five year later he came to Santa Rosa. He let my son play his<\/p>\n<p>Montagnana cello. Yo-Yo said he wanted to play bass as a child,<\/p>\n<p>but his father told him their house was too small.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Listening while the children stroked, he thanked the air.<\/p>\n<p>He thanked the children, clapped for their trying.<\/p>\n<p>He thanked our ears and the music showering over them.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014Previously published in <em>The Place of Our Meeting<\/em>, Finishing Line Press.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7786\" src=\"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Yo.Yo_.Ma_.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"228\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Yo.Yo_.Ma_.png 227w, https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Yo.Yo_.Ma_-150x150.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 227px) 100vw, 227px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[1144],"class_list":["post-7785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prompts","tag-donna-emerson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-21z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7792,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7785\/revisions\/7792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}