Watching Sharleen Play (Violin)

Slides mere horse-hair, tight
on pernambuco, pure
over pulsing gut, and her
figuring fingers release

a thousand true arrows
into blue keening air.
Shimmering sisters we dare
hardly breathe as we hold

our daughters, watch them watch
Sharleen play, see her hold
herself to the perfect yet
changing form of the notes,

shift the music’s shapes
in the soft moon shafts
of sonata, or, high
on Debussy or Haydn, she

sets loose complexity,
limbers to crescendo,
cuts the maiden to quartzy
ice flung, unyielding, against

this death – plucks the bleak jig
of Schubert into the brink
of a Stravinsky spring.
We watch her figuring fingers

coax sheer joy sul ponti-
cello. She reaps us all
to raptures in the slip
of her glissando.