Leslie Opatril
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  • Compositions
    • Compositions >
      • How to Better Serve You...?
    • Musical Words >
      • I Ran Into a Hanging Basket
      • Rider Beware
      • Beach Glass
    • Reviews
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Musical Words

I Ran Into a Hanging Basket

For Mary Byrne, who, upon learning I had run head-long and at full speed into a square wooden hanging basket (I had a mark on my forehead), declared that "I Ran Into a Hanging Basket" would make an excellent title for a piece. Well, here is a poem. One day there will be musical piece to match it.

A day - today -
​I ran into a hanging basket;
​Away it swayed
Swirling colour fantastic:

Scattering droplets refracting beams
​Disturbing petals and leaflets green -

The world a swirl of bright evening air
​Confused feet curled on ground not there -

Above, seasick pendulum
​Just gliding, it slows
​Weathered as one
​Backlit scarlet, indigo...

​If only, I swear
​As stars clear my eyes,
​If only I could so
​Beautifully weather surprise.

​-Leslie Opatril, 2015

Rider Beware

For adventurers who are tempted to duck ski resort boundaries to make tracks in the fresh powder. These words are a plea for you to educate yourself and think twice before skirting the orange tapes, fences, and barriers. Locals are always saddened to hear of the annual, and avoidable, ski hill tragedies that result from out-of-bound excursions.  

​
Rider Beware
​​has its first setting in a chorale piece of the same name.  
​
Picture
​​Silent snow falls in darkness
Swirling through a deserted way;
Falling to rest on a motionless form,
A frozen body, alive that day.

​Giant hills rise in darkness
​Warning teams: enter by light;
Snow, in and out of street-light beams,
They watch, and wait out the night.

Rider, pass not out of bounds,
Rider, proceed with care;
Rider, must you leave the bounds,
Beware, be prepared.

​At mountains' mercy you will be
​Beyond man-made control;
​Wild and untamed much you will see
Beyond the skill patrol.

​Rider, pass not out of bounds,
​Rider, proceed with care;
Rider, must you leave the bounds,
​Beware, be prepared.

Giant hills, in fading darkness
​Beckon souls: enter by light;
​But time has passed - it's too late,
​Too late, you died in the night. 

​-Leslie Opatril, 2015.

​​

Beach Glass

Shifting with pebbles
​Beautiful bottle-green grains of glass
Glow almost iridescent
Smoothly polished pieces of broken past
​From other shores, centuries, seas
​These shards sift with earth to be-
Come sand from sand cycling with tides
​Wearing until recast.

​-Leslie Opatril, 2017.
Picture
© Leslie Opatril 2017
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