sonata - poem

She plays here every Saturday
in this cliff top café -
Beethoven, Mozart,
depending on the weather –

while he sits by the window
watching the sea
and feeling
the sweep of the notes

as her fingers glide,
fluid as the waves,
as clean as the gulls’ sheer flight
to the horizon.

He trails in her wake –
displaced
a little more
each time,

dying with the last
resonance –
falling in a way
he doesn’t yet know the name for

and all the while
her fingers place the notes
there
then,

closer,
as the waves flatten whitely
against the shore
white against black

to the brink of him
and beyond.