I READ IN THE SUNDAY PAPER

that Michael Tilson Thomas 
couldn’t relate very much to music 
in the months after heart surgery,
not the way he had before.
“I found it much too specific and arbitrary.
Why these particular notes?”
Instead, he found himself
drawn to the sounds of the Pacific,
the birds around his house in Bolinas.
I don’t know what he was thinking
or what he was feeling then,
what I do know is the resonant note 
his words struck in me, the
tenderness
of being opened,
opening to.

M.S. Rooney lives in Sonoma, California with poet Dan Noreen. Her work appears in journals, including Illuminations, Leaping Clear, MockingHeart Review, and The OffBeat and anthologies, including A Walk with Nature: Poetic Encounters that Nourish the Soul (University Professors Press). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.