Batons at the ready
composers pore over scores
as members of the audience
enigmatic and enormous
fill their notebooks
with anecdotes
which months hence blocked
they will drag out at three AM
hoping for the notes
to fly to the staff
jump-starting their pencil.
It's too early to predict a libretto
that will satisfy everyone
but for the moment at least
the strings can be heard
fine-tuning, above the shuffling.
Even the kitchen staff stop
what they're doing
and stand stone still
souffles puckering on burners.
John, fresh from an appetizer,
studies the trifold
then sits with his hands
over his ears, trying to get
the closing bars right.
He will spend the next two years
beginning the ending
collaborating with his current live-in
a budding ethnomusicologist who,
back from a trip to Asia Minor
where she studied the lost art
of noise, is here this evening
gaunt and Gucci'd
documenting the forum
for the next issue of Composer.
