January 21, 2017

My head a hive

the tangle of thoughts and stings

and tears

yearning for my daughters

and the hand of my husband

while shunning the crowds.

I drove myself

alone

to Pine Point

with the crows and gulls speckling the sky above.

I passed the shuttered summer houses

and walked down the path of snow

and sand to the beach

as the sky began to darken.

I kept to myself when people passed

moving away from them like the plovers that scurry

from the incoming waves

and I shot a quick smile if they got too close.

I listened to the roar

of waves as they curled

and crashed

and found

for the first time ever

whole sand dollars

in the ebbing tide

three of them

salty and wet and gritty

one for each of those

I’m not with today.

On Listening to Fred Hersch

It’s the moment when I’m passing through the living room

where my brother plays the same measures of

Brubeck,

the same each time I walk through

like he only knows a line or two

or needs to keep practicing the same

12 measures

til he gets it right,

but really

this is how he keeps a secret

since no one will ask

whatcha playing?

since it’s always the same

every time he’s home.

The maybe day

when he stops me

and asks me to sit with him on the piano bench.

me,

surprised he knows my name.

I’ve been called on stage

from the audience.

No heart and soul.

Instead he says go ahead.

I’ll play something and you

just improvise.

Play anything. I’ll join you.

I am not an improviser.

I am in Level 4 music theory.

I practice scales.

I know Bach Invention 1 in C

without the trills.

Good. That’s good,

he encourages me,

knowing I will leave soon

with one leg already over the side of the bench.

Sounds nothing like the Schumann I’m learning

(my teacher has scrawled the pages with reminders

about counting

and jabbed it with her pencil

in places I needed to practice

but never did).

Sounds like our own piece

no one will ever ask to hear.