Nine Four Time

Before a note—a thought:
A figure from the mind’s conservatory
Trying to find its place on the keys.
A finger falls a full foot
Onto the white;
One hammer dives out of place, meeting
Its mate—the string—in their accustomed place.
Her atoms shake from their rest;
Like a flock of pigeons, a note flies away.

Though the filmy window is pried open
(He composes in the breeze)
The note perches nowhere.

“What next,” he thinks.
His fingers plow through his disheveled hair
For the hundredth time this morning,
Scanning his library of notes.
He strokes a G and it cycles
Across the room and into oblivion;
Immediately, he wishes he had it back.

He places his middle finger on an ebony,
Then lifts it, thinking better.

He laces his fingers behind his head
Like the convict he is.
He brings silence to his third-story walk-up dungeon.
The symphony wafts in
With its lift-gate percussion
And airplane strings;
A dolly warbles along like a bassoon,
With a triple-tap car horn as a counterpoint.
The faulty chorus of quotidian words
Fades in and out.

He again finds himself unable to accompany it.

He flutters his fingers and throws out
A few fungible notes,
Then promptly breaks into Minuet in G
(How gentle is the rain…)

Another child unborn.

It no longer matters:
It would have only amounted to
Another solo,
Played in Nine Four time,
Against an orchestra of common meters.