This is a poem I had written a while ago, based on a prompt that runs “a 45 year old music critic falls for a 17 year old piano player hailed as a prodigy”. I can’t remember where the prompt was from, possibly Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves. I didn’t like it so much at the time, but it has grown on me despite the somewhat inconsistent metre. And rhyme. And I’m not sure if there shouldn’t be another stanza in there.
Man, why do I even like this poem?
Well, anyway, here it is:
~ * ~ * ~
And she was a prodigy
Long-fingered
Kind-hearted
Wiser and better than any I’d known
A pianist oddity
Such music!
Such talent!
Skilled and impassioned in blood and in bone
And God how I craved her
Dimples
Philosophies
Speaking for hours on Mozart and Brahms
My articles raved her
“Just sixteen!”
“A must-see!”
Singing her praises in writing and psalms
I loved her in agony
Such decades
And lifetimes
Separate us – and God, why must this be?
Please grant me my sanity
Sweet angel
Sweet siren
Playing your hymns to your damned devotee.