By: Lynn Strongin When life went out like a lightbulb the room blackened like charcoal like soot, the room I practiced Chopin in at ages five and seven under the stairs during war the earth in Europe smoking. Our nightwalks remind me of those hours: mallards, ribbony green satin could go out like the bulb on a truck: but pickups stop for these mallards. My gendarme, my mandate is to warm up, rehearse: truth like a nail in my palm. Scales, arpeggios, wood-ducks' mournful sounds are my sounds silenced, word-by-word. Nights like sandpaper on which we struck sparks re-lit our match: conversation. What we picked up then (like a dropped stitch) changed the whole pattern. Further out in a sleeve over ocean I never saw a sailboat so still as death itself and death's mirrored reflection. |