An overcrowded table of strangers

The Music Room

In a single life, we change rooms so many times.
Enter and leave, pass through, refuse to enter,
refuse to leave. Each time we believe it won’t
follow us and each time it does. We never know
this until we arrive at the last room we will ever
enter which is also the last room we ever leave.

We lie swathed in the sticky veil of a million laments.
Regret sits on the nightstand like a glass of white
wine we knock over again and again, apologizing
each time as if we were an unwelcome guest at
an overcrowded table of strangers. How long
has this faint music been playing, we wonder.



As breathing is the grand baton that conducts the
sweeping movements of a life, so is the ceasing
of it the last beat that cues an adagio of stillness.
Even absence holds music. And so we listen for it;
pace the windows to see if it disturbs the nearest
palm or waves back from a green flush of frond.

In one measure, we score so many arias. Bow
and blow, finger and finesse, pause and hold, cease
and rest. Each time we believe it is the most perfect
music we have ever heard and each time we are both
right and wrong. Faintly, it swells to return again.
We knock over the glass, enter the room and leave.

Joseph Gallo
May 24, 2009