TIME TO BE HAPPY
It’s springtime and it’s time to be happy
Soon it will be Easter, the happiest day in the Christian calendar
And how can I not be happy with increasingly more daylight
Longer days and I can go on a walk at 5:30PM
And, in time, way north up here there will be little night
In fact, just a dim dusk which is what we call night in summer
That will make my accustomed indoor activity difficult
For how can I write music, read W. H. Auden
When my eyes are blinded by brilliant long day light
And I don’t feel the quiet dark indoors and maybe a candle-flame’s faint glow
Even in recording-studios they play only in red light
The buzzing bright florescent lights turned off and the soft, red light bulb
Glowing to set the mood and I have a red light bulb in my floor lamp-stand
When I practice, I turn on the red light bulb for mood
And light a candle to Sarasvati when I write poems
All that dims with the rising spring sunlight, bright days and
The candle-fire yields to the sun even as indoors yield to outdoors, and
Latin music makes more sense with its outside
Percussive soul and how many different drums and percussion go into one song
And group response chanting vocals because outdoors you can gather in groups
Salsa steps in the open air, and even the piano plays percussive syncopations
And it makes no sense for me to play a mambo all alone in my apartment
Or a güiro or claves punctuate your dance steps to a Bach fugue
Which it does make sense to play all alone in my apartment
Like Bach way up in the organ loft and the congregation sitting still, listening
I live in The Festival City and in summer we congregate by the hundreds
At Bluesfest, or Folkfest, or Symphony under the Stars
And the Mandolin Coffee Shop and Bookstore will soon open its patio
And it will still be hard to read W. H. Auden in the brilliant sunlight
When it is better to hike, bike, picknick or barbecue and even bonfires
Don’t really work in the perma-twilight we call night way north up here
Sitting indoors doesn’t make much sense;–as if there hasn’t been enough of
Sitting indoors, though one does become accustomed
And springtime is always a new exploration of life way north up here
As when, a teen, one by one, I discovered Beethoven’s only 9 symphonies
Sad to discover that Vivaldi didn’t sound like Beethoven
Trying to get over the mini-skirts in the halls between classes
Or at desks while I tried to concentrate and get algebra over with
And I would play around on the piano in my parents’ living room
David Fekete 