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Community Vocal and Choral Music

“Virtual Amateur Chorus”

A poem by Alice Elizabeth Rogoff, a participant in our “Singing Saturdays” series.

The woman with her mouth

shaped in a perfect “O” 

I imagine she sings opera 

or is in a fine classical chorus. 

I see Ellen in her 

Zoom’s square living room, 

the daughter of an old friend’s friend 

from Berkeley. The conductor is in 

his home country of Sweden. 

It is eleven A.M..in San Francisco. 

It is night in Sweden, 

but I can see through his window pine trees 

and it is still light out. 

From eleven to twelve, 

I do not check virus numbers 

or watch the news. 

In our hundreds of soundless little spaces, 

The harmony, unheard, is perfect. 

Reprinted with kind permission from the upcoming anthology Pandemic Puzzle Poems, to be published by Blue Light Press, San Francisco. You can read more poetry by Alice Rogoff, and more poems about music, in Fog and Light, also from Blue Light Press.

Our April “Singing Saturdays” featuring Verdi Requiem starts April 10.