I see Dr. Jones in the evenings, playing piano,
framed in the triangle of his front window—
a short, thick man and grizzled around his baldness,
his back to the picture glass, shoulders bunched
as he raises his face to the score, his forearms lifting
and lowering chords that float through the pine
and liriope twilight. Chopin, Scriabin?—I can’t quite catch
the strains that pass through the glass, cross the dusk
to the curb where I stand, holding a dog leash
and thinking of the late Mrs. Jones, whom I never knew,
and then of you, whose heart I wouldn’t want to break
by dying first. Not quite. It’d be enough to know that you sat
of an evening and played in a minor key, that your fingers
crawled over the keys and felt your way through.