162 The Meadow New World Symphony Theresa Monteiro Water over my hands, washing, of all things, a rolling pin. I’ve tried making biscuits. They’ll make me fat, and the kids happy because they taste like butter and love. Dvorak plays, a crying oboe, and a crying child appears. He’s afraid of black holes because they swallow everything—rock, paper, scissors. Here, I say, place your hand on the speaker, feel the tympany and vibrations of a lonely violin just like your own voice calling after me down a sidewalk the first time I left you at school. A ripple of sound I kept for the day, and until now. It’s like that, the symphony shaking our house, above our town, through blue atmosphere and black space, bumping against meteors and comets— cosmic pinball machine. Imagine the music from an immigrant’s hand moving eternally through galaxies and, maybe, all the way to a black hole. Can you see the tiny felt pads of a clarinet, obliterated by gravity, cellos crushed, the penciled notes of a wild-haired conductor dissolved? But these notes can’t be unmade. They quiver along the edges of the vortex, singing: Going home— I’m just going home.
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