We periodically host readings in the loft above Lorelei Books.

Pictured here, Rebecca Morgan Frank reads from The Spokes of Venus (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016).

Soggetto Cavato

by Rebecca Morgan Frank

Lovers are hidden everywhere around us.

Listen- their vowels are are carved out and buried

in the symphony itself.  I could translate you

into tones, hide you in the cantus firmus

where you’d remain untouched, unseen.

No one would even suspect you’re in there

as the counterpoint to butterflies gorging

on the  bush, the fogged blue skyline brightening,

all of the tropes of nature I’d hide you in.

You’d never realize your name’s throaty

vowels made notes. Perhaps my love

is for the scholar of  a hundred years hence

who hears my longing’s notes, who finds my

loving signature of you.  He’ll learn to love

me back for how I dissolved you in;  he’ll

love me for my cleverness:  our secret.  It’s fine.

Love is at a distance at its best.