Wayne Miller

 

CLARENCE PLAYING


When at last Justine arrives, he’s at the piano.
The hammers strike and rise

with his fingers, and the pedal’s damp
shifting carries through the instrument

as waves echo through the frame of a ship.
Outside, each car marks a moment’s

passing, and when a muffler rattles,
Justine looks out the window, then back

to Clarence as he presses into clay
the shape of another chord. He's always

imagined music as a sort of climbing —
by the song's end, he's reached into a brief

rapture of completion (as a child reaches
into a cabinet of sweets). Though

now he thinks perhaps the music's
more like a map of rain hitting water —

he's moving closer to her without moving;
and how wonderful to be held from her

at last by nothing but the song's duration —

ANDY, ALONE IN THE CITY First a church, then an awning, then a dog licking a stain from a cobblestone, windows through which strangers obliquely mirror the recognizable, an empty fountain full of dry leaves, a corner — motorcycle firing itself away —, steps to a hospital (or a school), a beautiful woman descending along an iron rail, a sidewalk café— chairs pressed to the wall as if by the wind —, a word he knows from the mouth of an old woman, or her son, an ice cream cart, a sewer smell rising like water, a hawker hawking for a strip club, a hostel, or a day spa, a cigarette tossed deliberately from a balcony, a yellow wall catching the light — taking his breath —, a butcher sawing through slabs of bone, a kid with a busted lip rushing past, knocking Andy down, so he must rise and check his hands for grit, one by one gather up his scattered belongings —