Maybe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdtveJVV3p4

Maybe

When Arlene Smith sings Maybe,
I move with the opera of her young voice,
and go back,
so far back,
to such young days,
to the first cut of longing
and the first glimpse of mystery.
How she starts:
her plea piercing silence,
distilling all to a single question,
a lover’s question
become a mystery.
A lover’s question,
a young girl’s reaching
out to her God.
Feel the depth of her young yearning,
she so wants her quest’s consummation,
like a devotee to her Christ,
who so wants salvation
in the arms of her savior.
Maybe it’s in his kiss,
in his caress,
in his loving of her,
the unfulfillment of her longing
a covenant broken.
And she takes me back,
so far back,
to such young days,
when green longing was a longing outward,
longing for a movement to me,
for a completeness
beyond what I could know,
longing finding an image of itself,
in a lover’s question,
in Arlene Smith’s Maybe.