I understand that advance reservations / special preferences
Are not accepted / and, really, should not be
But a word in your ear couldn't hurt / could it?
And so, I just wanted to say that in the next life / if there is such a thing
I wish to be a bird or equally enthralling / unimaginable
Musical
The bird not a surprise, I'm sure / to one who knows me, as you do
After all, I have been a student and lover / obsessive, my wife would say
Of birds from earliest childhood / first memory a bill-snapping owl baby
But my knowledge only serves to teach me / or is this veering toward the pathetic?
How little I can imagine the freedom of mind that must be granted by / mustn't it?
Flight
But the musical wish may catch you off guard / or may not, I don't mean. . .
This wish arising at my daughter's piano recital / not an occasion of high art
As the youngest students, knobby-kneed / graceless and beloved
Coltish feet in untied sneakers pumping the pedals / not a genius among them
Make with their eyes closed music / somehow; how?
Beautiful
I can no more make music, no more know how to begin / hammering fingers, shining eyes
Than I could leap from a windy cliff and / in soaring, faultless harmony
Fly, a weightless, airborne man / the jagged rocks below
And it is the hopelessness of these wishes / shared only with you
That makes them what they are / thank you
Dreams