Author's Note - This came to me earlier this evening whilst mulling over a few of my on the go projects. After consulting a few people I thought it fit to post it here. Unfortunately, when I uploaded this, the document manager removed some of my spacing before words at the start of and in the middle of stanzas. No love for the document manager. Ah well.
A knowledge of basic musical terms would be useful here, so as to not overlook any of the references I've made throughout. Enjoy!
----------------------------
Piu Rubato
Crawling
As if over an ephemeral piano
Or gliding over a harp
Your fingers know me
The first performance of your work
Practice, hours
Of fretting before the stage,
Laughter and tears
Pay off here.
You assume the role like
A seasoned actor
And If I didn't know better
I might be fooled
But I think I've known it forever
And maybe you have too
So now I lie here, waiting for
The curtain to lift from your
Doubt and the downbeat
Of desire to strike hard and fast
From the violins.
A symphony, never before played
Explodes into life and you
you conduct it masterfully.
Gentle crescendos,
Hairpin to nothingness under
Your watchful eyes and
Soft, coffee hands
I, as your sole audience member
Refrain from making noise as
Is customary. Save the
Lyric of hushed moans and
Tangled syllabi of words.
You harmonize to my appreciation in my ear,
Just as softly.
The forte hits suddenly and
I jump, entangled in its bed of notes
Tempo building, building, ending in
An ephemeral sforzando of your name
Over and over
The reverb shakes the foundation.
And then just as rapidly as it
Came it fades away, the cello guiding it
Back to the firmness of the bass,
My bed, the earth.
As I lay there swimming
In the shallow pool of half-sleep,
You whispered my name
In a final chord against my tired ribs
And our skin melted together like
Fourths and fifths and perfect octaves
Dark against light, tonic against dominant
I slept through the night,
The same melody stuck in my head
Through the wee small hours of the morning.