A Lover of The Symphony

I sit myself in a place where the crowd is mere mirage.
There is nothing in this concert hall but the music
and myself. The violinists try their best to pass as people,
but they’re mannequins from a department store,

fitted out in black with instruments cocked on shoulders.
Their bows slide back and forth across strings like machines.
Automatons blow into flutes and oboes without actual breath.
The brass and percussion are drawn with the confidence

of a cartoonist who knows no one will question the lines.
Everything on all sides is a mere artist’s rendition.
The aim is so I don’t notices how empty it all is.
Only the sounds feel human. And of course, the one who hears them.

The symphony moves through me like a blood transfusion.
It branches into veins I didn’t know needed filling.
If feminine, she’s a girl in an Iowa cornfield,
or a woman from a tribe I cannot even name.

If it’s masculine, he’s a father leaning in with advice,
or a man at a bar who knows when not to talk.
And if it’s neither, then it’s the Milky Way at amazing speeds,
or a deaf man in the bowels of a cathedral composing in his head.

In the auditorium, I arrive early. I sit quietly, wait for notes
to gather themselves according to the intentions of someone
I’ll never meet. Pitch, rhythm, tempo, meter, timbre, texture –
an appointment kept. Even if nobody else shows up.