Radio Receiver Tuning

I’m sitting in my mother’s library in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Bach cello suites layering themselves onto (and into) our lethargic late afternoon conversation. Co-contemplating gratitudes, small mysteries, and end-of-life as two young mule deer wend through the cholla and chamisa, approach the window, co-contemplate us.

The music is interrupted briefly as we stare back and forth through the window. Cello resumes, then ceases again. More elipses than skipping record. Like listening to the radio when passing through a tunnel, a series of tunnels. But we’re not driving through tunnels while listening to our car radio. We’re sitting at the card table built by my father, listening to Sonos.

The music starts and stops. The mule deer stare and blink. Time slows, softens, thickens. All four of us observe one another as the sun settles toward the Jemez.

I’d like to preserve this moment, I think, my mind meandering to another window, another mule deer, older, larger, browsing blossoms (poppies, marigolds, hummingbird trumpets, Mexican hats, and bachelor’s buttons) outside the casita, antlers puncturing the screen, repeatedly ripping the delicate weave, as he bobs for blooms. Unaware. Or unperturbed. Sated, he saunters across the gravel drive, vanishes into the piñon and juniper.

—//—

I come across the late David Bottoms’ thought on metaphor via Kelly Beard’s “After Words” which fortuitously finds me. Wanting…

—//—

I talk about the writer being a sort of radio receiver and learning how to tune your sensibilities… — David Bottoms (Source: New Georgia Encyclopedia)

—//—

I fiddle with the receiver, tuning into the “singing underneath”, listening for the ephemeral melodies, humming along with the song of interconnectedness, resonating with the rhythm of our shared experience, trusting process, trusting poetry.

—//—

[…] I asked him
what was he living for, really, what
was left for him?, a question borne
of bone-deep exhaustion and fear.
I expected him to point to me
or say our daughter’s name
but he said “poetry” instead.

— Kelly Beard, “After Words”

We look upon one another, into one another, wondering, blinking, trusting poetry as the sun sets and the library holds us in its rusty orange glow, as the mule deer flick their tails and return to browsing.