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On October 20, 1991 a firestorm ripped through the Oakland hills. Nearly 3,500 families lost their homes. Twenty-five people lost their lives.I lifted it like the Zen gardener
who touches the edge with one finger.
The rock splits open, unveils
a millennium, the history of this
place, story of creation;
the crystal bowl opens
the way lips part to form sound
the last sound a crack--
how it waited through the forging of fire
the fall
until that moment
my two hands lifted it,
the touch unraveling matter
through veins of stories unknown:
fire, woman, grail.
Fire storms the hillside.
We weave our way through people pouring into the streets;
a woman carrying a child in one arm, flung over the other shoulder,
some things wrapped in a tablecloth.
A man shouts after his wife as she stoops to tie her son’s laces.
Your fingers wrap firmly around mine--
so small in your hand-- and running,
running into the center of the flame.
He comes to her as one to a lake,
kneels, cups her in his palms,
feels her spill upon his forehead.
She knows he has dreamt of her again.
He feels that remorse he carries on such nights
when he comes to her
like a tribesman to confess dreaming harm to a soul companion
-- as if it were a sin to love water.
Your voice, through veils of sleep,
etches into my heart
the way veins of fire cut across a prairie.
He feels her there alone
His voice she tastes without swallowing,
lets it linger in her mouth
We have never touched like this before
The hillside still burns.
Ribbons of memory unfurl
carried by the wind into fields of dreamers
everywhere. Nothing is lost.
All that has ever been is at once alive.
Your voice, through veils of sleep,
etches into my heart
the way veins of fire cut across a prairie.
He feels her there alone
His voice she tastes without swallowing,
lets it linger in her mouth
We have never touched like this before
The hillside still burns.
Ribbons of memory unfurl
carried by the wind into fields of dreamers
everywhere. Nothing is lost.
All that has ever been is at once alive.
Veils of Sleep
What can you give that can never be taken?
Last night I found her amidst muffled cries
I will hold her thin bones against my ample flesh till the quivering
subsides
How will you hold the rare and perilous given you?
Dawn begins in the bones.
from Querencia
by Risa Kaparo
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VEILS OF SLEEP
Poetry by Risa Kaparo
Music by Richard Fammerée
Spoken Word Risa Kaparo
Piano/Keys David Ricketts
Cello Cameron Stone
