{"id":3068,"date":"2010-02-13T23:46:43","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T04:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/?p=3068"},"modified":"2010-03-01T23:30:43","modified_gmt":"2010-03-02T04:30:43","slug":"backstage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/2010\/02\/13\/backstage\/","title":{"rendered":"Backstage"},"content":{"rendered":"

[I wrote this piece to read at the seventieth birthday party of Gilles Lacelle, a very good friend of mine. There are allusions here that are specific to the situation.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Backstage<\/p>\n

Usually there would be two of us,
\nGilles and I, lifting, fitting and cutting,
\nplanning and discussing and finally
\nhis favorite part, painting.<\/p>\n

I’d be painting too, but I’d watch him:
\nother people would see the finished
\nset, but I would see his hands at work.
\nThe brush was a designed
\nextension of his brain: he knew
\nwhere the paint was to go, delivered
\nto wood and canvas with practiced
\nstrokes and rhythmical dabs.<\/p>\n

I can hear in the ambience of that stage,
\nwhere magic animates and lifts words,
\nincarnates them, makes them
\nreal: in brush strokes I hear echoes of
\nlong-ago rhythm guitar and drum
\nswelling into rock ‘n roll that roared
\ninto soft summer nights by the river;
\nthey fade and young voices flow in:
\nA-ke-la, we’ll DOB DOB DOB;
\nI hear the footsteps of young students
\nneeding help to sketch their horizons.
\nEven now the brush paints on
\nas he crafts his assured natural landscapes,
\nprojections of the soaring soul within.<\/p>\n

Perhaps as he paints he hums
\none of the barbershop tunes he is learning,
\nor maybe it’s an old rock ‘n roll tune
\nthat used to echo around the cabins
\nby the little bay in the river.<\/p>\n

Tonight, we all dwell in this world
\npainted by Gilles, and irresistible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poem written for reading aloud at the birthday party of a dear friend. (#1048) Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,3],"tags":[997,767,476,314,66],"class_list":["post-3068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-poetry","tag-aging","tag-friendship","tag-memory","tag-old-friends","tag-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}