I’m not much of a deipnosophist—
I sit and listen to better table-talkers
I might look lost in a funk,
but I’m just watching the board
tracking every conversational
checkmate and zugzwang
not antisocial, nor a solivagant,
just solving puzzles with pizzazz—
the crossword’s clues feeding me
new words to keep me quiet-busy
some might call it sniffishness
but they’d be wrong
I’ll speak my mind one-on-one
it's only in a crowd I clam up—
the tiny bones in my ear vibrating
to a silent ululation
he loves to tell a joke
in high school, he’d laugh and sway
until he was sick with humour
breathless in the hallway
now he starts every talk the same
have you heard the one about...
the latest headline a political name
Trump or a scandal
he speaks of the world and current events
then shifts to a song perfectly on key
his fingers find the chords by instinct
shaping the air with a melody
he’s the first at the door of the hospital room
bringing the light when the walls are grey
armed with a joke to scatter the gloom
and chase the heavy silence away
a lifelong friend
I’ve heard them all and I’ve heard that
She sleeps in my arms
as I fall in love with her
tiny body.
All the parts there—
the perfect curve of a fingernail,
the rhythmic rise of a ribcage thin as paper.
Every breath a quiet victory I didn’t earn,
but get to keep for a little while.
She changes every day;
it’s so hard to wake up as she sleeps and sleeps
until her eyes open
and those deep blue eyes look at me.
What can she really see
as I bend low to kiss her forehead,
soft skin against my lips?
And I sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow,
where the lullaby land is right here,
tucked between my shoulder and my chin.
Where the sky is soft and the clouds are skin,
and the trouble melts like lemon drops.
At ninety-eight,
the years are a blurred map,
except for this:
the sharp, clear grief of a son’s funeral
and the way the Mendelssohn rose
to meet the rafters.
His hand lifts—
a slow, ghost-weight motion
cutting through the heavy air of the room.
He is conducting the shadows now,
guiding a choir only he can hear,
every finger an instrument of memory.
He pays attention to the phrasing,
the swell of the alto,
the steady pulse of the bass.
He is practicing for his entrance.
The score is almost finished.
He is smoothing his lapel,
steadying his breath,
ready to step onto the riser
and find his place
between his wife and his son.
