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Epistrophy at Lake Lure

Keith Flynn

“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.“
--Thelonius Monk

First the picture, then a simple overtone,
Ripples on a sad piano.  A child in the water
Is screaming her first word, thoughts moving
Across her mind like the shadows of birds,
Her mouth a puddle so dense that thousands
Of stars drown themselves for mercy
In the dark insistent pull, a word uttered once
And refractions close behind.  In the misted
Pavilion two young lovers, separated by decree,
Stare like statues breathing, silhouettes
Of the Venus de Milo staring intently into
The other’s eyes.  “Miss one chord,“ Coltrane
Opined about Monk, “and you feel like
You’re falling down an elevator shaft.“
If we could remember our first word
And the will it took, like trying to herd fleas
Together in a glass enclosure, each impulse 
Paying no attention to the others, superimposed
On the edge of catastrophe and O what motion,
A concentric ripple of polyhedral certainties,
Laying out all the undiscovered lilies
That invent the world with surprise.
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