For Laurie Conrad
The title Composer is beneath her photo.
I listen to her Soul of Tired Earth. The flutes
draw me toward her, music pulsing through
cyberspace. I click on her invitation to connect
though it’s been four months since her death.
In her final class she taught about the over-Self,
how we’re all part of a larger consciousness.
She praised Obi-Wan Kenobi, his revelations─
how the Force binds our galaxy. Its energy ever-
lasting, atoms from stars harbored inside us.
After she revealed her illness, she told students
about her embrace of death, kinship with novas,
the ecstasy of a celestial address. I imagine her
reaching from a starship, placing chalk on milky
trails for children to hopscotch Home. Picture
how she’d plant blessed thistle & meadow rue
along black holes, practice offerings on a clavier,
light notes falling like patterings of Chopin’s
Raindrop Prelude. Tiring, she would close each
rehearsal the way she ended our meditations:
with a bow. “Breathe.” Her word pierces the dark
quiet like a Jedi lightsaber.
Fran Markover lives in Ithaca, New York, where she works as a psychotherapist. Her poems have been published in journals including Rattle, Calyx, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Karamu, Runes, Spillway, and Earth’s Daughters. Awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination and a poetry residence at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Her chapbook History’s Trail was published by Finishing Line Press.