Band leader Francisco calls his audience
to celebrate our existence:
  Welcome to the cosmic heart
  as it beats in these players,
  in the music, in ourselves,
  in this city-center park
  where children frolic in the fountains,
  before San Fernando Cathedral
  whispering the holy,
  and County Courthouse
  groping for justice.

The trumpeter blasts his notes
till blood from his heart
reddens his face,
floods our ears,
vibrates our bodies,
sets our souls to tremble.
He blazes to angels in the air,
in ourselves:
  Tell the world:
  Throb,
  wherever life waits,
  wherever it may come,
  drum it into being.

April 19, 2008