Story Tower, by Lee Woodman

Story Tower 
               inspired by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, the music and the story
 
Building story on story
Balcony by balcony
Windows through blinds--
 
                                        We frame our lives     
 
Your oboe takes us forward,
We heed recurring themes
A river flows unwinding
 
                                         with currents underneath
            
The leavings too familiar,
Arpeggios gone rogue
Each day a chapter lengthens,
 
                                         each year the epic grows                                            
 
We deflect, we hide in labour,
Your trumpets push us on
We raise the shades of mourning,
 
                                         a seed becomes a rose
 
We soften as your harps wrap
Around the violins
Torment melts to forgiveness 
            
                                         reprise becomes reprieve        
 
There’s a rhythm to our days now,
Remorse and anguish end
We know this lilting story                 
 
                                         we climb the stairs again
 
We need one thousand stories,
To fall in love so slowly
A tender piccolo’s refrain--
                                                                        
standing on balconies, I remain

Lee Woodman

Lee Woodman’s essays and poems have been published in Tiferet Journal, Zócalo Public Square, Grey Sparrow Press, Ekphrastic Review, Vox Poetica and The New Guard. Lee is a longtime artist and media producer, whose radio and film awards include five CINEs, two NY International Film Blue Ribbons, and three Gracies from American Women in Radio and Television. Lee is a recent recipient of a FY19 Individual Poetry Fellowship Grant from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. www.poetleewoodman.com