by Julia Griffin

for Maria

“Barcelona Opera Reopens With An Audience Of Plants”
—NPR

And as the four musicians played,
The audience discreetly swayed,
While green ancestral traces stirred,
Deep in their sap, of something heard
Long since, by any count, in Thrace,
Where one of this same restless race
Had called upon their sympathies;
And so, although there was no breeze
In this strange greenhouse, they breathed in
The cello and the violin
Like watered air, and every stem
Sang with the sunlight played to them.