Winter Heart

Dear Jane,

The house is quiet

at eleven this evening.

I’m writing you

a letter on the piano.

The key is A minor,

the perfect pitch

for sunsets, red wine

and fog slowly dancing

across hollow waves.

My eyesight is hollow

these days. The house

is ill-kept. It tends

to ramble as though

it’s an old man,

or old woman and life

is divided between

the universes of porch

and bedroom window.

There’s always division.

It creeps slowly

in the fibres of subtraction

and addition. It haunts

every equation.

Perhaps I should pray

for sums. I dream

of summations and

conclusions. I long

to see a pier,

a dead end sign,

the terminus of a valley,

where dolomite is

a hundred-foot step.

I need a reason to

come to a complete stop.

With B flat, icicles

form in my memory.

Long talons hang

from the eaves of events.

Yesterday is

a Royal Dolton scene

on red velvet.

Last month lumbers into view

and I’m stopped

at a red light.

Diane laughs beside me.

The world crumbles

into snowstorm.

The key of C is summer.

It doesn’t exist

on this piano. I can

play a song in A minor.

Love, Carol.