Poetry, The Key in the Door and other poems

Rapunzel

There were twenty five of them;

I counted.

Assorted black

and white of men’s

shirts, women’s arms.

The timpani poised, waiting

and the trumpets

tipped free of moisture;

lips puckered at flutes,

bows resting or weaving

a swathe of sound, back and forth –

the violins, violas, cellos,

basses all like needles at

a sewing bee.

Sitting forward to be

closer to the music,

to swill it like good wine

before swallowing,

it was your golden hair,

your surprising

dark eyebrows,

your delicate fingers

that kept drawing me

in to the magic.

Then the conductor,

with a confident flourish

and a sharp tap of his baton,

drew you all together

weaving this cacophony

of sound into a web

of Mozart’s making.

And you flicked your long golden hair.