I had this friend who was a world-renowned fiddler. She had toured with Bob Dylan and the Old Crow Medicine Show. We both attended this small, traditional Catholic college, and she would play in the classroom buildings after dinner. I never passed up the opportunity to make sure that I was studying nearby. I wrote this poem nearly a dcade after the last time I had seen her.
I had a dream
about you
last night
you were the fiddler in a fantasy wedding held in the back of a K.Mart
by the baby supplies and discounted clearance junk.
it was an event planned by nerds
(the bride wore elf ears
the pimply and nervous groom wore a silver cape
of his own design)
and you were the fiddler
waiting in the wings
Your elder sister
who I've seen once and then only briefly in a photograph
on the mantel of your childhood home
in Ohio)
was next to you.
she was giving you exasperated commands
link a domineering stage mother
whose imposible expectiations reflect
her own past missteps
you looked at her in confusion
she looked back in frustration
on your cue, you nodded and stood.
your sister rolled her eyes and sighed as you walked on stage(
You closed your eyes, that contented half-smile returned to your face
the one you get when you don your fiddle
(given to you by Doc Watson and over 300 years old
and when you played the entire wedding party-
your sister, too
exploded into an intricate and intense ballet
I don't hear sounds in my dreams, but I remember your fiddling perfectly
in college, you would play in
what you thought
was an empty lecture hall
but I was there
I heard
it broke through the intellectual torture I so joyously put myself through
poring over words by
Aristotle
Augustine
Euclid (here's looking at you, kid)
The first fight that didn't involve drunken emotion was with my boyfriend,
a former monk who had left the monastery to go back to school
He told me he thought that the Virgin Mary's best feature
was her docility
I had laughed at him
cows are docile
humans are not
How could a queen be docile?
I who thought rebellious shouting was the opposite of docility - would not see his reasoning
(truth be told, I couldn't see it until he dumped me and married his own docile woman several years later)
"what I mean is someone like her'
pointing out the classroom door to the fiddler on the stairs
who unknowingly provided the soft soundtrack to our gentle and forbidden embraces.
I wanted to disagree and
valiantly defend your honor as a Woman of God
Who took no shit.
but
not wanting to open myself up to the scandal that such places look out for when one woman loves another
I remained silent
it wasn't docility
There were thoughts behind those still green eyes that he would never know
the same thoughts, I hoped, that floated behind your chestnut ones
we were not docile
We were broken, maybe.
broken by men who thought they'd like us better broken
but as women so often do
as Mary so often did
we bore those heavy things in our hearts
and just like that Grand Mother, you found a way to fill in the cracks of your broken heart
with the golden and living sounds from a 300-year-old
fiddle
