Some Music

Beethoven gets second billing on this one,
It’s his complete concertos and sonatas, but
The pianist gets top billing and his picture
On the album cover, after all he sat there
At his piano for fourteen hours and thirteen
Minutes for this final draft, this final take,
Plus how many hours practicing, rehearsing
To get Ludwig’s intentions just right, like this.
Imagine a world measured in sonatas, timed
Out in movements in different keys, here we
Are in the middle of it, Beethoven’s take on
It, begin at eight in the morning, play it on
Through the day, background allegro, adagio,
Prestissimo and rondo as we do are daily bit,
Some laundry, some dishes, some quick clean
Up, before we give it a once over to be sure
We did it all, and in the background we have
Our pianist playing – till, what would it be, ten
Thirteen PM? It’s not hard to picture him now
Getting up from his hours of work, the complete
Sonatas and concertos done, he closes the keyboard
In a rather dramatic fashion, then he probably
Watches the late news on TV, and finally, to sum up
His day, he goes off to bed – like the rest of us.




             Canadian Geese

They must not get stopped at the border
the way the rest of us would be, it’s been
closed for months now, Canada on one
side, the US on the other, pandemics can
do that to friends, but they fly over us all
in their ragged V-shaped formations and
squawk their complaints in neither French
or English, complaints, I’m sure, they have
made for centuries of migration, following
the seasons like this. They stop along the way,
a field nearby can hold hundreds, thousands
it seems when they get restless, begin to form
up their wedges to set out again, it’s as if they
are choosing up sides or maybe just choosing
what leader to follow; they know each other,
never seem to fight, except when they get
squawking which sounds like arguing, perhaps
arguing about navigation or leadership or where
to stop at the end of another day. These are just

geese, noisy communal beings following what
nature has set out for them, Canada one day, then
heading south, borderless, relentless, a reminder
how things should always be.


                     Novel Life

The hero of the book I’m reading is wandering
the streets of Marrakesh with great ease, even
names the streets and areas as if we plan to visit
and use him as our trusty guide on our next trip
to Marrakesh. For him there’s no language issues
in Marrakesh, everyone speaks English or at least
the people he talks to do, no one seems to speak
Arabic or Berber, which according to Wikipedia
are the two languages normally spoken by people
in Morocco, but our hero, world traveler and spy
extraordinaire cuts through the things that would
stumble us, drops a dirham or two getting things
done, sips drinks with beautiful women in the best
hotel bars. TripAdvisor doesn’t list the place he’s
staying, but it must have been selected because of
its atmosphere and guest diversity, the beautiful
blonde, the rugged Russian spy and our guy, who
no one supposed to know is a spy guy too, MI6 or
is it 7, I always confuse the two, but he’s undercover
as all good spies must be. But in the end the plot
and its outcome are simple and predictable, heroes
in the books I read win in the end, but I don’t read
them for that – it’s the place, for a few hours I get
to wander the streets of Marrakesh, spending lots
of dirhams, speaking English and a bit of broken
Berber to beautiful women and other spies that are
in some exotic hotel bar.

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His latest writing project is writing a poem a day during what seems like this endless pandemic – it’s in the two hundreds now. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Black Coffee Review, New Feathers Anthology, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, and Highland Park Poetry.