The Song

I am perched on a stool at the piano bar.

 

My eyes wander like the tremulous after-tones

of notes plunked out in pleasing sequences –

Wandering down cobblestones worn smooth by sandals

into small terra-cotta hills,

Wandering past the purple haze of thick cigar smoke

and women clucking sugary bits of gossip

as they stir, in cream, their dreams.

            The notes reverberate off the walls of a narrow street

to mingle with taxis and vespas and footfalls

and a delicate click of knitting needles as

a woman, scarved, brings them back into the bar

with a half-completed shawl she tries to sell me.

Notes so ephemeral, they curl around the tongues

and hums of shy undiscovered singers.

 

This song becomes their song,

unsung but known,

a conversation they have had many times before

and so, when the topic again arises, is

dismissed with a wave of the hand and an

“Así es.”