Spring

Today is our final rehearsal for the concert tomorrow.  Due to recent memory faults, I've decided to use a page turner for the Schumann piano concerto and I'll follow the score for the hardest section, even though that means I'll probably throw some notes to the goddess of bad notes because my eyes can't look two places at once, unlike Kim Peek, the autistic savant, the original Rain Man, who could read two pages simultaneously, one with each eye.  Imagine his special motor skills as well as brain cells.    

Meanwhile, I want to prune our little orchard, put organic sulfur on the grapevines, limber up on the keyboard and aim at writing.


Single Man

Winter lingers
nineteen degrees
like a childhood buddy,
a perpetual student,
who finally took a job
on a faculty, never
developed a facility
for using his degrees
among racing rats
nor did he learn
to stay warm
with a lover.



"What does that have to do with anything?" asks Virginia.

"I'm itching for Spring," I say.

"He probably is, too," says Virginia. "Maybe this year he'll be lucky in love."