She Has Won a Convert

photo from instagram by @phillyjim

Twentysome years ago, attending
the symphony for the first time,
my friend who brought me advised,
“If you get bored,
just think about sex.”
In the cool plush of the opera house,
Both the symphony and sex seemed
remote and abstract

Tonight, it’s steamy on the wharf
Inside, ascending to
the top tier in the dim,
Lit by chandeliers,
the silhouettes of six thousand souls
Amplified intimacy
Our thighs touching those of strangers
Sweat sticking shirts to skin
Colored lights shining on bare legs

Tonight, there are two cellos and a violin,
a piano and a French horn,
a bearded sleeveless drummer behind his drum set
a host of adamant, emphatic guitars
Voices raised in the brutal pursuit of truth
I’ve never heard her preach before
But she has won a convert

From where we sit I can stare
at the catwalk
feeling the cool metal slats
across my back
where I would lie suspended above everyone
with my eyes squeezed tight
submerging my body in the waves
of music crashing over me
mixing with my salty tears

Loose coils of ropes hang
From the ceiling and I picture
a wooden trapeze swinging across
the theater in a bubble of silence
on it I sit, sheathed in a shimmering blue
costume so sheer it might be painted on
maybe it is painted on
to mirror the broken open revelations
of the singers
by laying myself bare

inspired by Brandi Carlile at The Anthem, May 20, 2018