An offering of a poem

Years ago I attended a Roberta Flack concert in Roanoke, where she sang with the Roanoke Symphony. I wrote a poem about the experience.

I was an adult when I went to the concert, but I remembered hearing some of her music for the first time as a teenager, especially the song “Killing Me Softly.”

 

At a Roberta Flack Concert

By Tina Fariss Barbour

Let me set the scene:

You come around the edge of the symphony

and lift up your arms,

lift and wave the black and white

billows of your sleeves

moving them like ruffled wings

before you sit at the baby grand,

raise your face to the lavender lights.

You sing “Killing Me Softly.”

There’s this thing about me and music.

I occupy the song. It’s mine.

I wrote it. It’s the story of my life.

I’m singing it now just as surely as you are down on stage

while I’m listening far above in the bleachers

near the top, high above almost everyone,

ready for my flight, my leap out

over their heads, dipping down like

a mockingbird dips to listen.

Then I soar again out of reach

of hands that would grab me and

pull me to my seat,

my program rolled in my hand

tapping slowly in time,

keep me in the seat so I won’t leap

again to the young girl who wonders how words can hurt,

how the words of a song can reveal like a lavender spotlight,

reveal this young girl of fifteen

crooning softly with the radio

turned down so low so

no one can hear.

  Have you ever felt like a song was written for you? Are there any songs that take you back to another time?