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Musician on a Train
The viola was her instrument,
this young woman who played
in a fine orchestra, traveling
through the English countryside
on a half-forgotten train,
passing our miles with
measureless talk, delicate
pizzicato of her eyes,
allegro desire of my loins,
we talked about passionate
composers, and a life in art.
She asked if I would
promise to come to her
concert, at Albert Hall, and
I did not go. So long ago
I shared my young lies
that were more like dreams
that I hadn’t yet dreamed, while
she spoke softly of her craft,
rehearsal and performance.
Our talk was a simple etude,
words about art, and how we endured
these hard seats, and the rhythmic
clatter of the track we both rode.
She said she would meet me after
the Beethoven, at a side door, and
to please not say I’d be there if I
wasn’t going to be. I promised
because it seemed like the only
answer in a harmonic key.
Who was she? Did she wait at
the stage door, and wonder how
I could have seemed so sincere?
An old failing, not being there.
Yet decades and lifetimes later,
I return to that place, to that night
of my broken promise, and take
her delicate, skilled fingers
and walk to some small café,
where we can sip coffee, and
I find some way to explain
to her sonata-deep eyes, that
for all these years I stood outside
that concert hall waiting, listening
to the longing music inside.
Return to Volume 1.2
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