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Piston’s Suite from The Incredible Flutist

Long past the age of innocence
some of us still wear feathers
and sequins at midnight and open
our hearts to enchantment again,
past brutalities and cruelty,
past all stupidities
that make me wonder
if God is out of Her mind
to let us go on.
If I were She I would have ended
the human experiment millennia ago,
a sad failure, a bad quirk of Nature:
Not content with the steady effort
of spiritual suicide, our species
in its place as organelle in the One Body
became macrophages autoimmunely
attacking ourselves and the Whole
cosmic Life.

Yet I marvel how You, Mother Creator,
have faith enough in us to let us perdure.

Now the human children in Eastern Europe
lead their elders through art and acts
of awareness to save the planet
from gross sins of pollution, 
greed’s outrageous assault on Earth.
A Polish child embodies the fate of a flower
poisoned by industry—a precious few begin
to offer a way to restore salvific life
to creation’s body, integrity to ourselves:
science and art unite in the holy work.
Fifty thousand parents and children
go to the beaches at summer’s end
to clean up our litter.
We are trying to unfowl our nest.
The brave teach peace, channel anger,
practice patience.  Our hearts can still be
collectively moved, taken in music’s communion,
when a visiting Chinese conductor raises her baton,

a magic wand, we become one ear in the World’s Body,
our shared soul lifted with the gift of lyrical laughter
by oboe, bassoon, the animal whistles and hoots,