Shimmering Strings by Eugene Montini

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By a shimmering sea at sunset on my own and out of luck, longing suffocates my soul as the sun poisons what is left of my withered soul, a dull whip lash or even a gust of wind and night came like an immaculate bowl over flowing with stars and newness

Suddenly the voice of a violin thin and hungry floated on the black night’s air. Like a stray dogs' howling-It was my companion, it was someone else’s aloneness loose upon the sand

I sought this violin in the night I searched step by pitch black step, tide by tide, star by star. But it faded fell silent then suddenly surged like a flare in the brackish night, it was a pattern of incendiary sound spiral of musical contours and I went on searching for the dark violins life line the source submerged in silence

Finally there it was; a withered bow and its his hungry companion soaring over the lonely night on a solitary scale, a single theme that rung to the sky full of stars and wondering. And I played my violin half asleep held deep in the estuaries of my mind the strings giving birth to desolate cries, the wood worn smooth by the plunging of many fingers and I honoured the smoothness of a perfect instrument perfectly assembled. That hungry violin was like family to me like kin not just because of its sound not just because it raised its howling to the hungry stars; no because it had grown up learning how to befriend lost souls and sing songs to wondering strangers"

Eugene Montini 4 August 2010 A wonderful Kenyan friend