by Dick Westheimer
The song sung in three tongues
swells and descends with the beat
Bernstein intended, “Someday”
in English the tenors hold every note
as they would hope. In Hebrew,
full throated soprano voices sing,
“We'll find a new way of living,”
followed in muted harmony,
Arabic singers whisper about “a way
of forgiving.” The music fills me
with the stuff of hope, of a
new way of living and then
I remember the plot,
the Sharks and the Jets
didn’t make their lousy world
and Tony always had to die.
And as the the music fades
Tony rasps, “I didn’t believe
hard enough.” But then
I remember Maria’s
final note was sung
over the top
of a major chord.
Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. His poems have appeared or upcoming in Whale Road Review, Rattle, OneArt, Abandon Journal, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and Minyan. His chapbook A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine is published by SheilaNaGig.