The instruments, we carefully arrange
Atop the creaking dinner-table oak -
Remember, if you get to feeling strange,
You'd better just forget it. Go for broke.
The ritual's a silly little trip,
But easy to forget. You take a seat,
You angle all the papers, get a grip,
And...
          And then...
You grip the pen and try to - hey, shut up.
I don't know. You can't force it, right?
You just have to let it... let it...
It's supposed to work, but
It's all just falling apart and there's no,
there's no rhyme, nothing, it's a mess
and, I don't know, just let it... ugh.

A family comes together all hoping and smiling
over the cheap thanksgiving turkey trying not to
stare toward the empty seat at the table
until the phone rings. Then all bets are off.

Two Thanksgiving miracles this year:
a liver for a grandfather, a plane ticket for a mother.
Thank God we'll still make rent! We'll still make rent.
An idiot child says "I'll talk to you soon. I'll see you soon"
like he doesn't understand the gravity of the old man's hollow wheezing.
Everything falls inwards in time.
But one ticket means the four kids will have to wait,
hold down the fort, have faith. So they wait with their faith.

The sun rises. An idiot child, an aspiring poet,
almost thinks it glints off a surgeon's blade.
He mistakes the glare, here. Scythe. Not scalpel.

So when the phone's ringing wakes the whole house,
he rushes to pick up, to hear the good news:
a wife sobbing
and crying
and "he's gone"

And an idiot child, an aspiring teacher, cannot hide this.
Three faces look up to him as he pulls them close
And teaches them a bit of wisdom he wanted to hide forever.
Here, he watches over them like an owl, scared to blink
while elsewhere, God, like a vulture, does as He pleases
and elsewhere, a mother holds back enough tears to drive home.

Years pass. I wonder. My mind wanders.
I remember my lips and the scythe and
cutting out a piece of hope that should've bloomed.
I know this: maybe it was mercy. The hope went necrotic.
It had to be rejected. It was not sustainable.
It could not be.

even as I lift it like a wounded bird off pavement,
out of its case and against my chest
as my heart cradles it close and my hand presses it away.
I don't let it in yet. I can't. Not yet. Maybe never.
The viola sits atop my knee and waits for me.

And they know - I know they know - how long it's been
From my own lips, lips that once would hum along
As younger fingers danced up and down that ebony stage...

It's nothing to me now, but it's a gift, so it's everything.

...they'd dance for hours, because I loved it.
I grew around it and it grew through me,
This need I could never share without seeming crazy
And maybe I was.
I loved the feel of it, the sound of it,
like a thunderstorm waiting just for me,
in the palm of my hand

like the one turning the viola atop my knee.
The strings face outward. When the time comes to play,
She will turn a graceful arc until the cool of her rib
rests against my shoulder like a lover's temple,
her eyes turned up to wait for me
to realize just how long it's been.