in memoriam N.D.C.
Come, sit.
The cherry trees didn’t wait. They’re already puffed
with petals. Before long the blooms won’t
be here to remark on, gone like
the old hit-and-run play, a thing of beauty
you don’t see anymore. Baseball bats used to be ash,
with a banded grain, light and dark,
drought and flood, each year signing its autograph.
You can keep score to record every play,
but you can’t recreate the game using the score. Not like
the score for a Chopin prelude, every dot means play this note,
every letter means play this way, and all you need is a piano.
All you need is a piano and years of practice. Every day.
What if you could record a life in shorthand, each day a
grain written in arcs and dashes, a bold dark line for
a job well done, a slash for a dispute, every thought numbered,
from prosaic to profound. Every shade of regret a different typeface.
Those days sitting under a cherry tree—
just blank.
