As flute players, we listen to the flutes often...our friends, our mentors, musicians we've never met...  Once in a while, someone will come along and their music will just stop you in your tracks, and you take note and listen...heart beating steadily, feeling that THIS song just might be yours...there is a feeling of such connection... and it was that feeling that lead to this poem...

Love Flute

By J. M. Skutle Carlstad

If I had never before

heard

A flute

I would know the flute now

From your song

If I had never before heard

A flute

I would play one now

Because of your songs…

Songs

Which take me

Through canyons of my soul

Reviving ancestral memories

Where we walk through mists

Of sweetgrass smudge

And sit by gently nodding elders

Who smile

And share

Their prayers, their wisdom

In tipis by the river…

If I had never heard

A flute before

I would now know

How the loon sounds

At the break of dawn

And see how the sun

Rises

Over prairie hills

I would know the sound

Of thunder

a new storm in my heart

That beats like the drum

Echoing your melody

And the dawn

That chases the desert into being…

If I had not seen you play

Or heard your song

I would have missed an epiphany

A blending

Of past to present

and a timeless flow

Towards future rivers

of knowledge

Refreshing

Recycling

Renewing

Our ways

I would hear the laughter

Feel the love

Of our people

Living, caring, sharing

And I would dance

Inside the lively woodlands

Of my heart

Where our Creator

Endows us

With most wondrous relations

Carrying a message

Of gratitude,

Grace,

And harmony

To the dawning

Of future understanding.

If ever a love flute

Played a song

For me

Your flute

Would play that song

For

It fills me up

Brings me to life

Warms my heart

Awakens my soul

And opens my eyes

To all that has been

And all that can be!

And, I, with grateful ears

and heart wide open

Hear your songs…

and know myself…

I will honor you now

In each song

That I play

Upon these, my flutes…