Duende

If I were a musical instrument, I’d be

a guitar, or violin, one that cries out,

the way the clarinet belted out

Smile When Your Heart is Breaking

on the A train last night.

My father raised me on standards

played by ear with giant hands

that stretched across piano keys,

Someone to Watch Over Me

in F# Major, his specialty.

He didn’t have to hit

a white key until the 7th note.

Ginette Neveu played her violin, as if

she too knew she’d die young.

You hear it in the music, see it

in the way she cocks her head.

So when I play my guitar for patients

at our local cancer hospital—

South American music:

Barrios, Villa-Lobos—and hear

the sexy rhythms, I’m playing

in an outdoor café instead,

in Buenos Aires or Santiago, while

the patients sip a full-bodied Malbec.

For while it’s winter here,

there it is summer.