The Woman Within Me

The Woman Within Me

I knew a woman who used to hold up pictures
with piano wire, indifferent to the dust that
settled around the edges, where sunlight beat
on the glass through open windows.

She'd whisper a song every morning along the
keyboard that held her grapefruit salad, until
all thoughts disappeared in quiet submergence
intensified by breathing.

Her food was pallid but it rang so beautifully
against fine china. That was when she first
noticed her hands; muscle, vein, blood coursing
in sheath of skin, flexing, touching texture; release.

New synchronies of pleasure emerged with intimate
association. But her wrist, her bones, began to ache
immediately and they burned. And the Heavens
laughed at her pain, for time is not amendable.

I knew a woman who used to hold up pictures
with piano wire, indifferent to the dust that
settled around the edges, where sunlight beat
on the glass through open windows.

She glanced at my face in a bar mirror and looked
away. I envied her inner peace, her conformity
among the younger girls on the other side of the
bandstand.

She's in love with a musician; he's in love too.
A small breeze ruffles her long fine brown hair
against her olive cheek. The bartender keeps
eying me. I put my head down, lighting a cigarette.

Closing my eyes, I can hear the piano playing
something by Chopin. I listen, look at the keys,
and follow the hands in my mind and play. I learned
to live this way, inside a dream not ruined by
crippling arthritis.

I knew a woman who used to hold up pictures
with piano wire, indifferent to the dust that
settled around the edges, where sunlight beat
on the glass through open windows.

She walked into the pages of my poem and
said, "This is my story." Somehow the
poem became personal to me and I realized that
is what writing is all about. But I warn you all,
this is as close to her as you'll ever get.