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Sarabande

          for Barbara Vink

I thought I'd begin with a guy playing a violin.
Some of the hairs on his bow are broken.
About three or four minutes into Haydn or Mozart
he breaks a string
but then I switched it
to a woman violinist
then to a woman violist
and finally to a woman cellist
the ancient wood between her thighs
giving rise to a sarabande by Bach
bringing to mind among other things
Bergman's last film.
I love the breeziness of it all
the connect-the-dots simplicity
and carried it outside
to try it out against the receding cityscape
hoping to find the right fit
the right mood
something Catherine David calls
the beauty of gesture -
the finesse and scope practice confers.
I almost had it when I realized
that the cellist - let's call her Alex -
wasn't really into it.
Her mind was surfing -
I guess accomplished players can do that -
thinking about tattoos
and how she'd decided the time had come to get one.
But that was it.
She wasn't sure what she wanted
or where she wanted to put it.
Perhaps some sort of Asian motif
a talisman, her own Rosebud
on her right shoulder
or maybe her inner left thigh.
The secret as they say is in the source.
So she boards a train
amid rubbernecking at Shinjuku junction.
Even the conductor muses
that he too could live there.
The tracks converge into a deep magenta
accompanied of course by Alex's subtle bowing.
I vote for the thigh
and begin assembling ingredients for gazpacho
which I promised myself
I would prepare before the end of this poem
when the shore will beckon
and the twins will begin their seasonal whining.
Tattooing I tell her has been around
since the Stone Age
as evidenced by Nova's Ice Mummies.
It won't take long
and not all are painful.
Something about the proximity to bone
the chest or lower back for example
which continues to brittle
with each variation
up to the climactic
I've fallen and I can't get up
one cold wintry day
while reaching for a note
high on the neck.