One The trees like masts no sails. The flag’s an oak’s dead branch. Music. Tears at the end of the music. Seeing you now. Missing the other…her. I mean, she’s just a friend. Bluest eyes. Her wandering eye. I am not the owner of the white Victorian, I’m the renter of the earth-tone ranch house, standing in the street in the snow, weeping. Two Trees encountered—are they not black flagpoles? The day you discover you can no longer run. The day before. Then music’s considered: there is nothing musical in the sound of the wind the rain the tears the lies. Din of completed wind, and all this time The Goldberg Variations, Glenn Gould, ca. 1955. Like, but not, the wind the sun the night. In his fingertips. Three The din of wind accompanied the “Storm of the Century.” Music, over there. He plays every night, same time and place. Tonight, he’s playing loudly. I’ll put more than fifty cents in his cup; I’ll shake his hand slower than the words the gambler whispers for prayer as he scratches his last black chip to the square on the soundless green felt.