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A Show Tonight

The young dawn pierces languid night
And dips the theater in newborn light.
The Shen Yun trucks are at its doors,
For there will be a show tonight.

The crewmen build but time is tight
With staging, props, two hundred lights.
They dare not let a minute slip,
For there will be a show tonight.

A horn proclaims with trembling might,
A fiddler sings with trills so bright;
Their fingers warm, their lips alive,
For there will be a show tonight.

With leaps and rolls and spins in flight,
The dancers warm up to excite
Expectant throngs now at the gates,
For there will be a show tonight

The dusk melts into limpid night,
Arrays of stars toss lambent light;
With gasps and aahs the curtains rise
For there will be a show tonight…

Oh, will there be a show tonight!

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Brian Marple is a percussionist for the Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra. He resides in New York. 

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6 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    How wonderful it must have been for you to be a percussionist with Shen Yun. Your demonstrative final line, “Oh, will there be a show tonight!”, sends a perfect message of how privileged you are to be there for the practicing and the performances. Your poem captures the sensory thrills and delights and brings them alive.

    Reply
  2. Gigi Ryan

    Dear Brian,
    Your elegant poem gave me chills as I read the last verse – all had come together for the “show tonight.” You have shed light on the behind the scenes work that is as beautifully orchestrated as the performance.
    This is my favorite couplet –
    “The crewmen build but time is tight
    With staging, props, two hundred lights.”
    The crewman are artists, too and also must work in tight time.
    Gigi

    Reply
  3. Marianne

    I loved the build-up of excitement in this poem! You can just feel what it must be like on the other side of the curtain as a performance takes shape. And then the explosion of energy when the show begins. Really wonderful to read!

    Reply
  4. Margaret Coats

    Brian, you and other musicians of the orchestra, along with the finest dancers and singers and costumers and set builders, work together to make Shen Yun the supreme cultural show it is! I’m impressed with the creation of a new program each year. Like so many Shen Yun performers who have more than one art to their credit, you with your poetic showmanship supply incomparable energy.

    Reply

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