Memories: “Moonheart”, Music, and Travel
I remember when I first saw a copy of Moonheart on the shelves of a bookshop in Sydney, Australia. It was around 1985-1986. I was browsing the shelves, and the name of the book jumped out at me, and I kept coming back to it, as if drawn…
I’d never heard of the author, Charles de Lint. Who was he? But the name of the book, Moonheart drew me. It was a name to conjure by, a name to dream by…
Eventually, I bought the book. And read it. And re-read it. Again. And again. It fired my imagination in a way very few books in my life
have.
Decades later, Charles and MaryAnn came out to Perth, Australia, as Guests of Honour at Swancon, Perth’s annual Science Fiction Festival. Perth is on Australia’s west coast. I live in Melbourne, on the east coast. I threw my harp in the car, along with my favourite Charles de Lint books, and drove, five days, coast to coast, across the infamous Nullarbor Plains, to play music with MaryAnn and Charles…of course, by the time I met them, I was too overwhelmed to play well, but they were both so kind that it didn’t seem to matter…
The feeling that I got from that first reading of Moonheart has never left me. That yearning for something that is almost seen out of the corner of an eye, that feels so close, that prickles the back of your neck, but cannot be touched or seen in the waking hours… This song, or poem, (I think it works either way) “The Taste of Rainbows”, is my attempt to describe those feelings.
The Taste of Rainbows
Tasting the chime of the bell birds call,
Seeing the sound of the red, red rose
Mingle with the music of the clear blue sky,
I touch the sense of wonder.
In my dreams,
Oh, in my dreams…
Savouring the sound of a lovers laugh,
And watching the songs of joy
Dance, oh dance with the golden sun,
I touch the sense of wonder.
In my dreams,
Oh, in my dreams…
Feeling the depth of my father’s voice
Soothing the smell of a nightmare’s tears,
Dreaming the taste of the rainbow,
I touch the sense of wonder.
In my dreams,
Oh, in my dreams…
© Ann Poore
Ann Poore is a harpist, singer/songwriter and poet, living in Melbourne, Australia. She has two CD’s out, Prayer for a Peaceful Ending and Bullets Like Rain. Both are available on Apple Music, and the usual streaming platforms. She has had a poems published in the anthologies Oz is Burning and Alternative War, both B-Cubed Press, and another poem published in the Hunter Writer’s Centre Grieve Anthology 2016.
Celebrating CdL 