Nocturne

There is a blue city in mind

constructed slantways

along a rippling canal,

clean and unpeopled but for a musician

who plays a harp without strings.

The city has one chair

where he sits by the broad strokes of water.

A lone streetlamp tends

its blue arc of light.

A Persian door. A zeppelin sky.

The world filters though

his empty frame as he plucks the air.

Maybe you hear a song or maybe you don’t .

That is the choice we are always making.

“The Twin” is from How to Live on Bread and Music (Perugia Press, 2009).