This afternoon the vulture couple
sit stoically on the limbs
of the long dead tree in the preserve.
The rain was torrential
as we watched from the dry
confines of our home, they
stood soaked to the feathers
with nowhere to hide, knowing
they couldn’t out fly or out climb
the purging clouds, so they set
soaking wet and stared at us.
And then I knew, just looking
at them, that while I felt sorry
for them perched in a downpour
they felt the same for us, we
unable to know the joy of flight.
The first one felt right,
there was nothing deeper considered,
just that feeling that now,
I know, anyone might have provided
but then, it was something
in a world of nothing.
The second, really, was
certainly right, for life this time,
the wisdom of a single failure
enough to ensure success,
and when it came apart
thirty years later, it was
apparent it was never right,
just more than nothing.
This one is right, for it
does not require feeling so,
merely being in her presence,
a completeness I never knew,
which explains why this time
nothing can get in the way
of the ultimate everything.
I want so to say that i feel
your pain, but we’d both
know that was an utter lie.
I can tell you abut my pain,
describe it at great length,
and I will be utterly disappointed
when you admit you can only
imagine it as a reflection
of your own pain, which I
am certain doesn’t begin
to rise to the level of mine,
but that is your failure, and I
will forgive it for I know
that my pain is unique and
beyond even your imagination.
So let us just agree that each
of our pains is beyond
the contemplation of the other,
secure in our own uniqueness.
Today was perfectly ordinary
which is how I would have my days
and how they so seldom agreed to be.
I did pause and look at the Yamaha keyboard
and remembered that when the Court
of the Empress Theresa rejected Mozart,
he attended the symphonies of Haydn
as a form of consolation.
That reminds me that I, once,
played the piano not particularly well,
but with what my teacher said
was a great depth of feeling.
Haydn, who I love to this day,
had nothing to do with my quitting,
it was Handel and his Largo
from his opera Xerxes that was
my undoing, a burden to large
for my smallish hands to bear.
I did find a recording of the Largo
and listening, gazed at my hands,
and for a moment I wondered
if they might just have finally
grown sufficiently large.
an old writer and his words 