On ListeningHDTo Yo Yo Ma on Tape

"Music ... makes a constant sacrifice of praise," Stevens wrote.

Silken sound touches everything in my room, is in everything.

I imagine fingers that shaped, molded the singing wood, that fashioned the enchanted strings, that move leaping phrases, intricate stillnesses from the strings.

I imagine Casals' working against the Franco regime, Bach's nimble notating for his God.

I think of fingers meeting in community around the world, despite all.

And I praise.