We are all at once both a composition and a composer. We have the ability not only to compose the future of our own lives but to help compose the future of everyone around us and the communities in which we live.
—Maya Angelou

THIS DAY/THAT DAY
December 1, 2016

Pauline:
This day
A double rainbow over our city of Kingston
Reveals
This is really happening
All is real as any rainbow
A display
Being and Non-Being create each other
Or so they say.
I shall return to check that this is really happening
You shall return to check that this is really happening

Pauline:
Uranus cycles through your stars
Returning in your eighty-fourth year.
Crow eyes me through the kitchen window
Our skylight opens to the myriad lights and
The 10,000 Interviewers want to know
your process
more than ever before.
Speaking with the BBC you say:
“Yes—some do place a feminist interpretation on it,
but I was not thinking of that when I created
Bye Bye Butterfly.
I was in the studio and I knew I wanted to use
a record.
So, I just reached for one on the shelf,
without knowing what it was.
It turned out to be Madama Butterfly.”

Pauline:
You are here!
You are not here!
I don’t understand what day it is.
Days have fallen in between spaces.
Remember to remember
We will survive this.

Pauline:
One day,
We are tossing exotic crumbs,
strolling by the Rondout Creek,
Your words float in the wind:
“I chose
Rosa Parks Day
December 1, 1955
because …”

Pauline:
You chose that day
Because
You are drawn
to truth
and the extreme essence
of listening
in deep time.
Listening
to the heart
of the world.
That day
Rosa Parks did not give up
her seat.
There was a power within her.
“I wanted to be free …
so other people would be also free.”

Pauline:
You are free and
traveling through
Sounds of Great Liberation.
No matter the venue,
the composition
is the listening,
Sounding,
Dreaming.
Being
and
Non-Being.
Choosing
in each
moment
until the listening of all
is heard,
and everything you do
is in all ways
New

—IONE