ROOMS WITH VIEWS

     Create a white canvas and dream into it

     a world of beauty and grace.

                                    Alberto Villoldo

1.

A hulking shroud,

gauzy and black, hides

the scaffolding behind,

conceals the work in progress:

the transformation of a façade.

If you were on the inside looking out,

through the metal bars and planks,

through the sighing, somber veil,

you might say

it was a prison’s view

and miss the Easter rain

and its subtle serenade.

2.

Ninety years old,

in an assisted living facility,

deaf and blind,

two weeks from death,

she sits at a piano

unsure.

When her hands meet the keys

every song her body knows

wakens, heaves through her fragility.

Every note is true,

though she can’t hear any of them.

Is there anybody listening,

she asks.

Yes, many!

And more are on the way.

She plays until her hands stop.

She stands,

utterly spent,

thinking she is done.

Then remembers

with surprise and delight:

Wait, there’s one more!

3.

A shed of a room,

dark, narrow,

window painted over,

not much wider than a man’s shoulders,

lined with the saddest wallpaper one could choose -

so dated, faded and peeling.

A pathetic table for patients

cowers against the wall.

Toy speakers at the ceiling

turn the sound of the surf  -

an attempt to calm -                                     

into incessant traffic.

This is where the tiny man,

God bless him,

administers, with thin needles,

his ancient medicine

into the body’s tender sheath.

This is where he preaches, in pigeon English,

what he knows, practices,

with a Buddha smile.

All his broken words…

a strange music,

a happy exhalation,

amounting to nothing more than this:

I help quiet the argument inside.

If no argument inside,

no argument outside.