At The Piano Bar

With you there
at the piano making
music. Your pudgy
fingers somehow

impossibly stretching
to reach the chords,
the sure way you find
the correct keys.

I sit there
between jubilation and despair
inside — a brief pilgrimage
from one mode to the other;

a move from great joy
to an envy almost as great,
my senses slipping and bleeding
between the two.

Meanwhile you continue
to play. You seem oblivious
to my swinging to your music,
a beat behind the tones,

looking like a failure to
the outside but knowing
I am in there, right there
with the swing.

I continue to hear it
I find the beat for a few seconds,
no more — and as I connect
and make right with it

you do not see but continue
to play. We are in sync
for a few seconds and God
feels it and touches me at least,

if not you, though your playing
seems to agree and for that moment
when we are in sync,
it feels like the world stops turning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T