Fall 2007



Confession

Last night
I had tickets for the symphony —
The Red Violin Chaconne
for which I'd waited weeks and weeks,
but it was bitter cold
and a northwest clipper threatened
to repeat last month's unexpected
rage of wind and white loosed
sometime between intermission and
the fifth ovation,

so I didn't go.

Instead, I distracted
with bhaklava and Bogart,
wished for snow enough.

By midnight,
only a fine flurry of gauze
dusted the driveway, hardly an excuse.

Today I watch The Red Violin again
reminded when a soul longs to sing,
the perfect instrument finds it, shapes
its truest music, ignites it into
one transcendent sound.



Rachelle Rogers is a writer and poet. Fiction author of A Love Apart, she has received competitive recognition in memoir, fiction and poetry, and was granted a 2002 Wildacres Artist Residency. Her work has appeared in several literary journals including Passager, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Calyx, The Pedestal, and on the NC Arts Council's Poet of the Week site. She lives in Asheville, NC.  Please visit her website at: www.rachellerogers.com.

For me, Confession is about the realization that there are no missed opportunities. The poem was inspired by the film The Red Violin, and The Red Violin Chaconne composed by John Corigliano. It is part of a collection I'm currently working on written to an imagined beloved.