Sitzprobe

Between certainties, or in the zip code of a wholly

new misunderstanding, we fall to sleep. Channel

swimmers grateful for the roughening cheek

of sand. And wake to salted tongues

as after a night’s long ebb tide

of lust or fresh floral cut of sorrow. If I knew

household harmonics did not require covert

studies in ballistics, or the nightly building

of a sarcophagus for the better woman:

the one who left you. The one I might

fail to become. The bed drifts toward the wall

with a window. At Sitzprobe, your veteran

orchestra and singers rehearse all together

for the first time, straining to rival in their

ardent energy, their almost jealous love,

the days’ unsung labor, its plangent sum.

Violinists bow like hussars. Flutists stare

down their barrels’ guns. The cellists

turn predictably grave as the singer

stands up, into her chord, singing

of what it was she had practiced dreaming

in sodden(golden) hours lived alone.