The day is hot and silent. Scalding sand pin-pricks my skin like

needles and the heat of the island sun burns me tanner.

I have been deserted for days, and my head is disquieted.

In desperation, I try to remember music-- the element to

which my heart beats. The calm.

 

I am wild with the quiet. I am hungry with the still and I am thirsty

with the desire for melody. Alone in desertion and salted with dried

ocean water, I feel my inners stirring. Ripened fruit has mollified the

pangs of human hunger, but the need for art, sound, meaning

rumbles within me. Music plays pleadingly in my head before I

realize it isn’t there. There is only sweltering silence.

 

But then, as the sun rests and blushes with evening, as the atmosphere cools,

I listen closer.

 

And suddenly, it all comes together.

 

The repetitive undulation of ocean waves carries with it the gravitas of crescendo.

A choir of brightly feathered birds croon gospel, praising the wholesome religion that

is the lush forest and the rain and the earth. Frogs artfully stroke long, webbed

fingers over their bulged bongos of throats while orchestras of crickets draw

catgut strings quick over their bowed legs.

 

The cacophony blends together as if a mirage. Each isolate falls perfectly into

place: a moment of realization, a culmination of music, of life within the

beauty of symphony.

 

The wild crafts music of its own; the earth and the animals hum

with a constant ebb and flow of melody unlike anything heard

by the human ear. When the band ceases to play and the trumpeters

want for sleep, the silence reveals the song of the world. I let

myself fall quiet to find that music, the thing I need,

is all around me.