Opus 118 No. 2

The Poets and Writers Prompt #77 asked us to write about something that takes place in an instant. I decided to write about an instant in music — one of the biggest challenges I think. I included a YouTube video of the piece that inspired the poem, one of my favorites of all time. Evgeny Kissin’s version is by far the best, but piece number 2 starts at minute 2:00.  Here goes:

Opus 118 No. 2

Saturday morning
at the practice hall,
second floor:
a fading gingko tree
waves slightly from the wide,
clean window
and early light
warms the mud-colored carpet,
attentive to a Brahms intermezzo
one he dedicated to an ailing
Clara Schumann, another composer’s wife.
The event of two chords
comes easy like a wind that
pauses before a dark
landscape, its colors
too tired, too fragile
to distinguish themselves,
hues of bruised fruit,
skin, things seen at dusk,
two chords like settling
in a soundless depth with a voice
calling from outside
the dreamt place
heartbreak laid out
on a shore one cannot re-encounter
in that light
under those glad, warm shadows.
A bird flits from the tree,
someone has descended the last stair.
I see my desire in the window,
rising from the instrument,
bringing it closer to breathing,
sleeping.
I want to rock my insecurities to sleep –
Harmony, a submerged garden.