Singing Hildegard

Across eight centuries of time,
Hildegard of Bingen flies into me,
uplifts the voice of me.
Her music brings me to sing with the Sisters.
Down a high-ceilinged corridor,
I walk in song with them.
In a ringing Abbey,
we chant our singing lives.

Songs that sing themselves
shine into cascading sound
that takes the singer up
and floats her ever gently
over unstoppable water. Singing Hildegard
changes a voice,
takes away a veil to a place
where the words all fall away

When her music passes through my body,
I become so many.
My thoughts are gone
into a stream of grace,
into a flight of love.
And so, am I made whole.
And so, do I thank with all my being
the woman who made these songs.

©Susa Silvermarie 2024

Hildegard von Bingen: twelfth-century visionary, composer, writer, artist, scientist, feminist, natural history scholar, healer, polymath genius, theologian, Doctor of the Church.

“The Universe” manuscript illumination 1151 by Hildegard of Bingen