"Vanishing Treasure"

My poetry performed by New World Chorale

Mar 04, 2025

This concert took place at Wellesley Hills Congregational Church this past November.

“Vanishing Treasure” is a poem that I wrote for the occasion of the 25th anniversary of New World Chorale, founded by my rather extraordinary mother-in-law, Holly Krafka, whom you will see speaking and conducting in this video.

John F. Cavallaro composed the piece for the 65-person choir and for solo cello (that would be Luke!) John and I were in communication over the course of a year as the piece took shape. He selected what he felt were the most resonant lines to set to music.

Below is the poem in full, which brings together, from my own experience of longterm collaboration, the idea of growing up with your artistic peers, and my attempt to imagine what it might feel like a few decades from now, to best honor Holly’s experience growing up alongside the choir she founded, surrounded by her closest friends. This was a wonderful imaginative exercise. I superimposed her life, the tidbits I know of it, onto mine to create a poem that is personal to me and to Holly and, I hope, relatable to all those who have made art with their friends over decades.

Here is the full poem as it appears on the last page of the singers’ score.

Vanishing Treasure

Sundresses sung through with ripe August rain

Wind whipped pages of my well-worn score

Birthdays and best days and Wednesdays
with

no special name

The sourest notes love to stick together

Clashing in our closeness
In thirds, in fifths we grow apart –
in sevenths, octaves

when we claim our space
Tentative steps we take alone, together

I didn’t always know
to count time so preciously.

We were young for awhile

So it seemed it might stay. Isn’t it rude
How time goes just one way?

Enveloped into Fridays
Thread into Tuesdays like cash into a coat hem

I trusted your voice

You trusted mine

A pact enough to seal out the infinity,

The siren call of other choices

Singing a suspension bridge from then to now

You remember me when

Time had no meter
Was formless and free

Tiptoeing over accidentals
Four staves from the brink
Scotch tape, a binder, a furtive cigarette

To hold me
Together

Calamity collected in a

Crisp cut off

Time can be dotted
Syncopated or swung
Well spent or wasted or gratefully sung

I remember us cackling
Camomile tea on my creaky porch swing

Cabernet in the kitchen
Whispered plans
Inside jokes,
which I cannot recount
in present company

Dreams coming true but in slanted rhymes

Offbeat
Secret codas hidden in a page turn

Happenings so sweet we couldn’t have known

to pray for them

Hymns hewn from madness

Intervals where we lost our part

Enraged
then forgave

then found ourselves

Suspension begs a question

Fermatas keep change at bay

Resolution comes due
Rest arrives... but won’t stay

Common intent drawn from what might have been noise

Arranged in systems
We take shelter
Dissonant memory made soft and

Round by resolution

So time takes shape in its signature way

Relentlessly metered

Refusing to stay

We mark time together

Respectful of its measure

Knowing we can’t hold it

This vanishing treasure

We didn’t always know
to count time so preciously.

But we knew we wouldn't count time alone.

And here are just a few pages of the score so you can see the sections that John chose for composing. I had never actually seen my writing arranged in this way and have never been so emotional over a pdf before.