PLAYING BACH

Displaying my arpeggios
on the keyboard
playing notes of Bach
in the first chords of dawn
trying to be exempt
from worry and anxiety
weighing in this cadence
and watching leaves fall
from the large Oak tree
knowing I'm merely a guest
at Elizabeth's piano's lesson
with a musical memory
so much clearer after
dozing into a troubled sleep
from a contrapuntal melody
taking out my album photos
to smile at my theatricals
with my actor's shadows
before my double mirrors
of my plants
exposed in the frigid air
of a sub zero windowsill
housing my geranium
taking off my kid gloves
from frozen hands
into suspended breath
on thrilling remembrances
at opaque January days
along Boston's Beacon Hill
as a devotee of Emily Dickinson
no longer seeing
the swan boats moving off
on the green of Public Gardens
in my Jamesian childhood
but now viewing tourist ships
in the home harbor
gliding to a magical realism
in my Cape Cod neighborhood
unfastened and sequestered
like a hibernating bear
behind a closed winter door
waiting  anxiously to be warm
by the wood stove
as snow caresses the yews
hovering outside my shadows
asking the spirit of the deep
to redeem,shape and renew me
when time will not keep
by watching a fly -high bird
hiding in woodsy grassland
near a once greensward field
where a poet walks
slowly but deliberately
near the whitened gazebo
sharing a labored high wind
with rising waves
on overlapped grey waters
as an arbiter and judge
of music and poetry
reads stunning verses
of Homer's oracles
for his own daily odyssey
about running rumors
when suddenly a childhood
hymn about miracles
emerges from a pastoral past
now anchored with friends
back at his inspected kayak
asking God for a blessing
of a lasting sun's protection
from storm and stress
as he waits for the catch
and carry of a local fisherman
who hands me a salmon filet.