The music is his marionette

Dancing under rippling fingers—

Eighty-eight plus him

Somehow make infinity.

A celestial intelligence moves him

So that his fingers know before he

Where they should land.

He is immersed,

Ensconced by melody,

Suspended in space,

When something takes flight

And his aura is shot with colour:

Golds, emeralds, amethysts, and rubies

Glittering with a vibrancy unseen.

Is this not life?

The notes ring out

Into collective captured consciousness;

An awestruck silence

As his sole lifts

From the instrument’s brass tongue.

Lost in the furore

Of whistle and applause

Is his father

And the sound of an empty heart brimming—

A rich chord

Of polyphonic dissonance,

A collection of strings

Wound tight.

Shame is spotlighted

In that dark tumult,

A hazy vignette of disapproval,

Watching boy on stool

Wasting his hours.

Now he wishes that courage were his,

Because he knows,

With his heart,

That life is this.