Music is the expression of joy . . .  Hsüntztu*
 
I have written music
all day.
 
I started with five notes on a line
and ended with eight pages:
many notes, many lines;
I won’t count the casualties,
the unchosen ones
marched off the page
into oblivion.
 
I always think it will
be impossible;
forever the pessimist
my glass half-empty.
 
Imperceptibly,
there is a becoming;
the music forms itself
when I’m not looking . . .
 
The phone goes
I leave it –
though I check the number
in case, just in case it’s you,
and when I return to the page
the elves have been busy . . .
here a solution, there a mechanism,
now a way through
the maze of possibility.
 
It is such a mess, but it is so beautiful:
the doing brings me closer to you
with every scratch of the pen,
every mark on the page.