By Joan Lerman
Lipatti: The Last Recital (September 16, 1950, Besançon, France)
Soft as silver-toned satin,
flowing sounds roll out of the fully-opened
black piano lid;
like white silk,
generous melodies
appear, evolve,
and flourish.
True, he was ill with leukemia,
but no one could imagine
his passing would be in just two more months,
on the second day of December, 1950,
at the age of thirty-three.
A strain to perform in that condition;
yet he must play, he insists.
“The people - - they are expecting me!
Music is serious,” he declares.
He sits on a small chair
before the shining black grand piano,
no sheets of music on its ledge.
His two hands, a superior long range,
move quickly across, back and forth,
like a skillful ballet dancer’s moves
and steps, bounding up and down
over the black and white keys,
hands climbing atop one another as if
in double rows.
Notes, arpeggios, fall from his hands,
each finger a distinctive voice.
Rapt listeners,
he wraps them in waltzes of Chopin,
meditations of Bach,
Mozart themes like symphonic thoughts,
songs of Schubert so fresh,
like newly opened blooms.
An hour passes:
more satin,
more silver,
ever-flowing harmonies,
innate logic and meaning ring out
into the waiting air.
In the hushed room,
the world parts like the Red Sea
before the last recital
of Dinu Lipatti.
Fr. Bill’s Funeral Mass
I didn’t ask for proof,
but you gave it to me.
I didn’t ask for calm,
in fact I was all about apprehension;
but you opened the door,
I entered and the room
responded,
enfolding me in a sudden glow
of welcome.
It was your funeral Mass,
a bright morning in Southern California.
A crowd of people around me
sat quietly, mostly dressed in black,
in the modest gray chairs.
I marveled at the calm reassurance,
moving straight to the heart.
A flash of gold sunlight,
your signature smile,
ageless and pure.
I’ll go my way now
appreciating
what those moments told me,
while they now flow away from me
farther and farther,
in the quiet,
like standing on a sandy wet shore
watching the billowing waves
until they disappear
into circling white foam on the sea,
and in the distance,
widening blue horizons.
Lines on a November Day
I had repeatedly thought
something was gone,
done, overwith,
and that I was in a sense
giving up.
Or had given up.
Or just felt like giving up,
because things were just too ugly.
In every way, in so many places.
So I had concluded,
in the back of my mind, that something
was over. Done. Gone. Just ….
Done.
I’m done.
You whispered:
it wasn’t over.
You didn’t really say much.
You just turned - - a gesture - -
a tiny sparkle - -
You held one of those teeny, spindly circle wands
that always came with the small bottle of clear bubble water.
I’ll go Greek dancing now.
See you later.
I look back: you’re walking along,
simply enjoying the moment
of diamond rainbow color swirls
disappearing in the dawn sky, opening up
the path before you.
Anita: Poem from a Photograph
Watchword:
composure.
Trademark:
sophisticated
but never pretentious.
Gentle smile
enjoying a hidden joke,
or just this moment,
the essence of poise.
Hands folded in her lap,
palest pink satiny polyester blouse
brushed light brown blazer.
Her figure is thin, but not slight,
not frail.
Short dark hair coiffed just so,
never artificial salon glare,
just a few soft bangs over
her forehead.
She’s out on a dinner visit at her sister’s,
elbows resting on the smooth tan rocking chair.
Did she wear makeup?
Don’t know. Her face as it aged into eight and then nine decades
remained soft, aglow, reflecting
her inner gesture towards everyone.
“I hope everything turns out just the way you want it to,”
she’d tell me as we got off the phone.
A difficult day to attend her brother-in-law’s funeral
when she’d just made it to 90; no matter, she was there,
plunked down the walker deliberately up onto the curb,
where the green grass gravesite lay, not even calling attention
to herself.
Her portrait: doing what was important,
quietly.
In the Physical Therapy Rehab Gym (To Robert F.)
It’s the end of a maze-filled day
for both of us.
He’s worked hard,
mending, mending alone,
pulling, pulling, further into himself
to draw in,
to pull up strength.
I straggle out, veering a little- -
after hours of mental and physical concentration,
too exhausted even to care
that I no longer had the edge
to stop myself
from instant irritability.
I run out of energy,
running, housing pain,
spent too quickly
to fully recover.
We begin to talk
as I walk by the long table
where he sits fairly still, the halo-bars all around his head,
something click-flicking in one of his eyes,
then softening, in his turned, open gaze.
I busily make excuses to him,
apologizing for my run-on babbling speech,
when he speaks, firmly focused in my direction:
soft in tone, quite slowly:
“Forgive yourself.”
I look back at him silently.
“Just take it slow,”
he continues.
“It’s a process.
Day by day.
Let it be.”
He’s right.
He knows.
When he remarked
that he’d actually drowned,
I had to catch myself- -
as if from falling over
a high bluff.
Then we spoke a bit more,
about reading,
not reading,
and a little about New York.
Joan Lerman is a writer and musician living in Southern California. A retired educator, she now works as a freelance editor. She enjoys great music, long walks, and small cafe tables for good conversation. Her poetry has appeared in Emmanuel Magazine.
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