Music So Loud We Can’t Hear
for Luke
(Joe Bonamassa Concert, March 18, 2017)

It’s as if all the thunder
and bison hooves
pounding over the Great Plains
for centuries,
the spiral winds turning
skies green, and
all the demon freight trains
who shriek across burnt horizons
have gathered here,
in Minneapolis, on stage
at the Orpheum Theater.

Thanks to Benjamin Franklin—
his kite and key and legacy
of innovation at G.E.—we
are temporarily deafened,
our ears sheared free
of their function, and
hearing itself driven deep
into our chests, nearing
the knocking of our own hearts
and even deeper, toward
the lost hell of Orpheus
himself, into the mineral
music of our very bones.

Now we’re tuned to a new key,
flung beyond anticipation
into agitated deep seas:
those inky blues of desperation.

Leslie Schultz

As you will know if you saw my post of March 20 this year, the Joe Bonamassa concert was a high water mark for me. I am still thinking about it, “hearing my memory” of it, and playing the CD I purchased that evening.

Here’s to those sharp peaks, moments of not-so-easy but profound listening!

LESLIE

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