Borrowed Thoughts

Often on a Sunday morning, a friend and I get together to write. She is always ready with a prompt and though we don't designate either poetry or prose, she usually writes the latter and I the former. This morning one of the prompts was the opening line from Sara Teasdale's poem, Places— "Places I love come back to me like music..."

Here's my own construction:

There is music in nature—

the sigh of needled boughs,

the staccato of pouring rain,

the bellow of an icy wind,

the bell ring of water over stones­,

arias sung by summer birds

and dirges played by storms,

but no music is as sweet

as the symphonies of places loved—

the violins of longing,

the persistent drumbeat of the heart

underlying every blade of grass,

gracing every memory

of wall and walk.