Boat Song in F-sharp Minor

by Laura Donnelly

Around me, the bubble is June-light,
is silence, a cat sleeping
under the bench. At the piano
I’m floating through Mendelssohn’s Songs,
the left hand a long-legged spider of arpeggios
moving across the bass clef.

This is the gondolier,
this is the boat –

The summer grows warm with notes
touching copper, heat rising from stones.
My friends ride by on their bright red bikes
but in the house all is a slow, measured
largo, small weight
on the metronome’s highest rung,
its neck bowed and bowing
to song.

Published on June 19, 2019