It's Still Life

The Architecture of a Moment

Notes: Rooted in the oldest English tradition, Anglo-Saxon accentual verse follows the rhythm of breath and heartbeat rather than syllable or rhyme, where meaning is carried by cadence, image, and pause. This is experimental.

The Architecture of What a Cello Remembers (long version)

I remember hands
before I remember sound.

Fingers like winter birds
landing on my ribs of spruce,
testing the truth of my grain.
Would I hold, would I split,
would I carry the weight of breath?

My strings were veins once,
raw gut pulled clean with salt
and strung tight as survival.
To sing was to endure tension,
the sweet ache of almost-breaking
that makes music possible.

Do not call my voice lament.

I speak because I must,
bow-hair dragging the old wind across me,
pulling light through the dark of my belly
like sunrise through cathedral dust.
Every note is a scar remembering blade.
I hold no sound that has not wounded me first.

The human thinks I weep.
But I do not mourn.

I recall.

I recall a continent shifting in my chest,
grain-waves splitting under pressure,
a fracture becoming resonance.

I recall the breath hauled from lungs
that never belonged to me,
how feeling can be poured
like molten iron into wood
until both burn and neither break.

To be bowed is to be rebuilt.

I know what it means
to be broken
beautifully.

The cry is not the question.
The cry is the cure.

Listen:
I am whole because I have been split.
I am alive because I have been hollowed.

And every low, slow note I give
is not sorrow.
It’s proof.

---

What the Cello Remembers (Accentual Verse — Bone & Bow)

I remember hands,
winter-birds light
on spruce-ribbed frame,
feeling my grain.

Salt-stretched string,
gut pulled clean;
veins of sound
strung tight to break.

Not weeping — No,
I recall wind,
axe-bite, blade-song
deep in my wood.

I speak because
breath must be drawn;
bow-hair drags
old storm across me.

Note is scar,
memory’s knife
cutting to root,
bright through the dark.

I do not mourn.
I remember.
Fracture to music,
shatter to voice.

Hollowed, I hold
ache like a well;
broken to ring,
split so I sing.

Cry is the cure,
not the question.
Low settling notes
answer in bone.

Whole through wound,
alive through hollow.
Tension my truth.
Song born of strain.

---

What the Cello Remembers (Blade & Bone Variant)

I was tree once.
Sky-bitten, raw;
axe found marrow,
winter split me.

Gut-strung tight,
sinew and salt;
made to break,
yet forced to sing.

Bow is blade,
teeth on vein;
I bleed sound
through grain and glue.

Each note a scar,
bright through sap;
wound after wound
hammered to music.

I am hollow.
Carved to endure;
emptiness rings
where heartwood lived.

Cry is command,
not collapse.
I answer pain
with iron in tone.

Split makes strength.
Tension my law.
I live because
I am stretched to breaking.

Listen.
This is bone-song.
Fracture to fire,
shatter to voice.

What you call sorrow
I call structure.
My beauty
is the cut that made me.

---

Written for Writers’ Digest Poem-a-Day Challenge. Remix a poem or poems. This is remixed from Cello Weeps and The Bell. Poems/prose, some AI/images ©Misky 2006-2025.