Practicing to Walk Like a Heron

Listening to Chopin in Early Winter

123 Listening to Chopin in Early Winter The first snow is falling. There is no one here. wisteria branches On the dining table, I’ve twisting gray-brown set the season’s candles. This is not the right time to wonder where my father is now. The wind is lifting the dead beneath the beech tree branches. They will or will not the bird’s nest break. I’ll sit by the window, the candles watch the snow quiet the day, stumble the bittersweet into an impossible hope. I want to pray. The nocturnes are playing. Next the etudes. Then the ballades. the evergreens If I could be these notes. Yesterday was a death march. along the stream There is no longer a word two deer for this. There is duration. ...