If I had a house,
the violin would be in the front room
on the east side,
the one
with the southern exposure.
And each morning,
I would play the sun
into the sky,
sing with a voice that only exists
in my fingers,
in the wood and the strings and the bow.
In the fall, I would play the leaves their soft descent
down to earth,
play them
into their brown,
their red, their yellow,
orange and purple shades,
out of their green summer dress. And
on Tuesday evenings,
I would sweep up the dust
from my rubber eraser,
collect all the notebooks that are scattered about,
and I'd read from the pages
to my guests.
Read them welcome
and love and
loss, and death
and beauty and new. And
I'd sing the leaves down,
their soft descent,
with the words that escaped
the rubber eraser. They
have their own words to sing,
the leaves,
in the fall, and I'd
play them welcome
and love
on the violin, try to translate them
on the page smeared with rubber eraser.
The leaves, dying in the shades of the season.
Death is beauty, falling from trees
in the room
in the front of the house
on the east side
with the southern exposure
with my fingers that sing
to the leaves that were green
turned brown,
releasing their grip
on the trees.
