10 years old who I-- whose piano recital I attended.
And I was in one of those moments in which you can see--
you think you can see the whole life of someone
given to you in--
"At Becky's Piano Recital."
"She screws her face up as she nears the hard parts,
then beams with relief as she makes it through,
just as she did, listening on the edge of her chair
to the children who played before her,
wincing and smiling for them as if she doesn't regard them
as competitors and is free of the need
to be first that vexes many all their lives.
I hope she stays like this, her windows open on all sides
to a breeze pungent with sea spray or meadow pollen.
Maybe her patience this morning at the pond
was another good sign, the way she waited for the frog
to croak again so she could find its hiding place and admire it.
There it was, in the reeds, to any casual passerby only
a fist-sized speckled stone.
All the way home she wondered out loud what kind of enemies
a frog must have to make it live so hidden, so disguised.
Whatever enemies follow her when she's grown,
whatever worry or anger drives her
at night from her room to walk in the dusty rain
past the town edge, her spirit, after an hour,
will do what it can to be distracted
by the light of a farmhouse.
What are they doing up there so late, she'll wonder,
then watch in her mind's eye as the family huddles
in the kitchen to worry if the bank will be satisfied
this month with only half payment,
if the letter from the wandering son
really means he's coming home soon.
Even old age won't cramp her if she loses herself
on her evening walk in piano music drifting from a house
and imagines the upright in the parlor and the girl
working up the same hard passages."
OK.
I'll end with two poems.
Let's see.
Where are they?
This manuscript I just completed is
called The Outskirts of Troy, hence all those allusions
to Troy.
I mean, they're supposed to weave-- work together
in the book.
And this is the last poem in the book, as I see it now.