A VIRTUOSO'S BREAKFAST

The door opens
to a china glass of blue
with nana's jam, kvass, groats
boiling green tea too,

Everything seen in nature
leaves small sorry sightings
day dreams on an exciting tram
as all things become new,

Over a dawn's trainload of ideas
drawn from my margin's outlines
and compose in an octave mode
a prodigy shares the road signs,

Until reaching our destination
where its treated human cargo lie
retrieves us at the last station
as a few children wave goodbye,

When is an expedition or experiment
ever wholly completed in rhyme
yet with a hello at our music school
we take our notes in time,

We try to obey the golden rule
in our own maxims and quotes
to pass any secret tension
we live in a cello's rosin notes,

And behave in familiar traits
as in a mirror's dark glass door
and confess as love waits
in a whispered corridor,

Watching dependent bureaucrats
yet one cool cat at every class
students grow into jazz
with knowing incomprehension,

Playing my dressed up riffs
from an alto sax or solo violin
with an open sentence stress
in my first knowing composition,

Confessing to reach a harmony
beyond my voice's convention
to extend my speech choices
on a minor key's vocal invention

We wait for a breakthrough
in content and lyrical form
without any local fear of tension
to encounter a musical storm,

Learning English and Latin
Russian and Greek
translating Pushkin or Bunin
is always yearning to speak,

With a major melody you knew
a poet recites in matins verse
trying to recall the calm night
from Hebrew psalms reviewed,

From a good day's childhood
delayed from recitation and respite
through our neighborhood hallways
we are made to be always polite

After a virtuoso's breakfast
hoping to record
what echoes in our tenses
we sense its own reward.