How to Be Alone with a Flute

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Do not think of your suffering. 

Release it 
through your breath 
into the flute. 

Let your fingers lengthen 
or shorten the air flow, 
make it live, speak 
something real— 

if only for a moment: 
that moment when a deer 
fades back among the trees 

that moment when a flame 
flickers in and out 

that moment of a heartbeat, 
finite, irretrievable. 

That moment when a pure note 
cuts through silence— 

and your pain eases 
back into its wilderness, 
beats its time, flickers out. 

That moment I call joy.